


Leg Begone

by spitfire00



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-07 14:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10362492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitfire00/pseuds/spitfire00
Summary: Trapped in a dire situation, Pidge makes the decision to lose her leg, rather than lose her life. Now the real battle has begun. Follow her journey back to normalcy, all the way from rescue to her sweet new prosthetic.





	1. Anticipation

**Author's Note:**

> Brand new multi-chapter fic. It will hopefully be at least 8 chapters long, and each chapter will be released every week. This fic will have some mild gore and violence, but it will also be packed full of the team's efforts to rehabilitate Pidge, so expect lots of comforting and cuddling as well. I'm going to try to keep this as realistic as possible, which means it will touch on some embarrassing topics that amputees might experience, as well as the grief and struggle that can be accompanied with the loss of a limb. However I myself have never gone through such an experience, so a lot of my information will be coming from internet research. Also note that the capabilities of the healing pods are completely up to debate, so I just took my interpretation and ran with it, so forgive me if it starts to feel far fetched or derives from what the pods may actually be capable of in future seasons. 
> 
>  If you want information about posting dates and the writing situation, follow Pidgeaggedon on tumblr and look for the tag "Leg Begone" for more information. 
> 
> This was fun to write. I'm excited to get this fic started!

The Castle's healing pods were one of Team Voltron's most valuable assets Shiro decided desolately as he watched Pidge's gentle breathing disturb the pod's interior mist. His paladins took turns in the pod's frigid embrace more often than Shiro was comfortable with thinking about, if he was honest with himself. They were good warriors, but they were also injury prone kids. Lance was too selfless for his own good and was frequently injured for his efforts; Hunk sometimes would get so caught up in the bludgeoning capabilities of his lion that he forgot he himself was made of flesh and bones; Keith tended to take risks when the consequences far outweighed the possible positive outcomes; and Pidge tended to forget that while her personality was made of thunder and steel, her body was not quite so durable. So, with a team like his, it wasn't so surprising for one of them to end up encased in the pod's freezing temperatures every now and again.

Shiro utterly loathed it. They were all just children. They would protest him seeing them as such, but it was true. None of them surpassed age twenty besides him, Allura, and Coran. The kids had launched themselves into space to fight in a war, and he had let them. He could live with that. However, he could not live with the fact that the kids could be burned, or stabbed, or blown up, or-

…

He hated how often his kids were in the healing pods. He knew he tended to be fairly protective of them, but he had damn good reason to be when they had all been severely wounded under his command.

With their team's terrible track record, Shiro had slowly taken to the realization that the cyropods were one of their greatest blessings, without a doubt. It helped lift some of the guilt he always felt when one of them was injured. When one of the paladins got wounded, they wouldn't have to experience the pain of healing, or the frustration of being out of commission for weeks, even if they still had to experience the horror of the injury itself. The cyropods could bring any species from the brink of death back to their prime condition.

_Well..._

Even while he knew the machines had their restrictions, they never ceased to completely amaze him. They had absolutely nothing like it on Earth, except maybe a medically induced coma, and those came with serious risks and were last resort options. However, the pod could take a mortal injury and have it healed within days. He couldn't even begin to fathom how the machines could accelerate the healing process to such an acute rate. So long as their bodies knew how to heal, the pods would keep them alive.

Currently however, Shiro cannot blame Pidge's body for its struggle in repairing itself.

He placed a gentle hand against the glass like barrier with a soft sigh before turning away from her prone form. It made his chest ache to see her so. The healing pod completely swallowed her small body, dwarfing her in size. The pod was built for Alteans who tended to be larger and taller beings, and Pidge was one of the smallest fourteen-year-olds that Shiro had ever seen, meaning that she filled maybe a forth of the machine. The pod’s zero G took all pressure off of her joints and bones and helped her to float in place, feature he had not known existed until Coran had activated it, explaining that her small body wasn't even in the kind of shape to do anything but exist. The feature also gave her a supernatural like quality with the way her face was so slack and her body was dressed in the white healing suit.

It was just a miserable picture to see her so vulnerable.

He wasn't surprised to find Allura had sneaked up on him while he was checking on Pidge. None of their team had a very certain sleep schedule since they had arrived back on the castle with their youngest paladin. The others wandered in and out of the medical bay at all times, so despite the fact that it was clearly the middle of the night, her presence wasn’t totally unexpected.

She stood next to his side silently, her glowing eyes trained on their smallest paladin with a rare intensity. He knew how badly the previous days had affected her based off of her appearance. Dark circles had encroached upon her normally flawless face, and her long hair had grown so tangled from neglect that Shiro also suspected she hadn't shower since the one she had been forced to take in order to cleanse herself of Pidge's blood.

Shiro closed his eyes tightly at the thought and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, he noticed that Allura had turned her gaze to him instead. He could only offer her a weak smile in return.

Eventually they wandered away from Pidge's pod and sat on the stairs in the middle of the room. Hunk and Lance had dumped some blankets down at some point, since several of them had accidentally fallen asleep in the medical bay at least once while keeping each other company. It wasn't unusual for the Voltron Team to hover around the pods while one of their members was indisposed, but no one had ever been in the cyropods for so long that they had actually needed to set up camp.

Allura sat with her elbows on her knees and let her hands fall limply. Her hair fell into her face and she let out annoyed huff before tucking her hair back, yanking it slightly as her aggravation at the whole situation showed though her actions. She had done a fantastic job of not taking her emotions out on the other paladins, but he could tell that while she was concealing it well, inside she had a mass of churning emotions that she didn't know what to do with. He had seen her stumble slightly as she walked and the way she would glare at her own feet as though they were betraying her. Everything she did seemed to suck energy from her like she was running a marathon, and she had spent much more time hiding away from the others than interacting with them like she normally did.

“You should rest...” Shiro mumbled, his eyes drawn to the floor quietly. “Coran says you're still not well.”

She shrugged, not really wishing to talk, but appreciative of his company. Her head ached so fiercely that it had prevented her exhausted body from falling asleep, and her mood had quickly spiraled even farther down than it had already been at. “The castle alerted me. She’s starting to recover the ability to hold a steady temperature by herself.” She mumbled. It was good news, but each word feels like cotton in her throat.

“I was just about to tell Lance. I thought I heard him down the hall a few minutes ago.” Shiro said as he scratched his chin. “He’ll want to hear about it.”

"They’re all awake.” Allura answered, and Shiro turned to her questioningly. “I just saw them huddled up in the kitchen. I don’t think any of them were eating though.”

“Figures.” Shiro sighed. “I’ll talk to them in a minute then.” He couldn’t help but look over at her uncertainly. She looked sickly and exhausted. If anyone needed to sleep, it was her. “How have you been feeling?”

She only shrugged again, her hair falling back into her face. She swept it back once more, her fingers tangling in the thick curls almost immediately. She let out a frustrated growl and yanked, but was rewarded with only pain. Shiro could actually see her hands shaking as she continued to yank and tear at her hair.

“Stop. Stop.” He caught her wrist in his hand after watching her distressed struggle for a moment.

“I just want it out of my face!” She half shouted, her voice breaking half way through her sentence, and she bent forward over her knees abruptly, her chest shuddering with something that was suspiciously close to a sob. He felt his stomach twist at the sight and began carefully freeing her long fingers from her tangled hair.

“I know. Hang on.” He sat up a little more and knelt behind her where he slipped her hair tie off of her wrist. Her whole body was shaking while he gingerly pulled all her hair back from her face, careful to not miss any pieces. He tied it back in a low ponytail and plopped back down next to her, close enough for their shoulders to touch. She hunched forward and covered her face with one hand, embarrassment turning her cheeks pink while all the agitation and fury she had built up from the past several days caused her fingers to shake and her head to ache. He felt the twinge in his chest tug at his heart a few more times.

“It won't last.” He murmured to her gently after a moment, his dark eyes trained on her hidden face. There were no words in the universe that could make their situation better. Shiro had spent the past several hours searching for anything he could tell the others that might make them feel normal again, and had found almost nothing he thought would help. He largely suspected that nothing would go back to normal until Pidge was awake and Allura was recovered. Until then, all he could promise was the healing powers of time and his vow to never give up on them.

Hopefully it would help just a little bit.

Allura said nothing next to him, but sniffled harshly instead. He could almost see the way her brain tried to conjure up something that would help him understand what she was feeling. Eventually, “I've never struggled with my emotions like this.” Her voice was thick and she wiped her eyes quickly before sitting back again. “I... I'm supposed to help guide you, but instead I've started crying about my hair-!” She lets out a sound that may be the mixture of a laugh and a snort, or maybe a sob. She tried to smile at him, but it looked more like a grimace than anything. He felt his face fall as he placed a hand between her shoulder blades gently.

“Princess... I think-... I think this is probably pretty normal. I mean... You gave so much...” He paused for a moment, and he could see Allura falter,

“You don't have to talk about it-” She said quickly, her red eyes pinned on his face. He held up a hand to interrupt her.

“You gave so much of yourself to save Pidge. She-” the words stick in his mouth momentarily, “She was dead, and because of you, she is alive and healing. There is nothing-” he stops again and shakes his head. “I saw your reaction. You were willing to give _everything..._ And... You gave so much of yourself…of your quintessence to save her. It is not surprising that you don’t feel well.” He was choosing his words carefully, and he knew she could tell by the apprehensive look on her face.

His facade fell. “I think when you give up part of your life force to another person, you’re allowed a few emotional breakdowns. You’ve been worn thin by trying to take care of us. There is nothing left to do but wait. Nothing left to do but rest. You’re just overworked right now.” She watched him for a moment and eventually felt herself calming some. She was embarrassed about her small outburst, but it became immediately apparent that Shiro was not going to hold it against her, or see her as any less of a leader because of it. She nodded silently and looked up through clumped lashes at the silence of the medial bay.

As always, her eyes caught on Pidge.

She just looked so impossibly small.

“Coran and Hunk have started drawing up some designs for a leg.” She grumbled, the words sticking in her mouth. “He mentioned he wanted to look at your arm to get a few ideas. Hunk said they wouldn’t start building it until she woke up, that way she could confirm their designs.” Shiro nodded next to her, and she let her eyes cast to the gap in Pidge’s figure where her left leg was supposed to be. The stump she was left with was thankfully healed over, but the scar tissue still looked too thin. She still had most of her thigh, but everything close to the knee had been lost.

“If I was to let anyone make me a new arm, it would be Pidge Gunderson.” Shiro commented absentmindedly, and she noticed that his eyes were stuck on her missing appendage too.

Eventually he stood and offered his hand, and she allowed him to haul her to her feet. They took their time in meandering the castle's halls, and she found herself contemplating the man that was Takashi Shirogane. He was a steady presence by her side, and it felt good to have someone to share the burden of Voltron with.

Hell, she shared it with all of her paladins, but Shiro was always especially quick to understand her thoughts and feelings before she herself was even aware of them. She suspected he shared much of her emotions and just handled them better than her. Either way, she was glad to have him around. He was an ever present pillar of support in her life, one of the very few.

Her stomach twisted as she wondered just who he leaned on, and despite how awkward she knew her words were going to sound, she found herself speaking anyway.

“You know, I- I'm always here for you Shiro. No matter what.” She felt his curious eyes turn to her as they walked. “You've been strong for us for so long, and I just wanted you to know that I'm here for you too.” It was silent in the hall for a moment save for the gentle sweeping noises that came from the motion of her nightgown swishing across the floor and the soft footfalls of her companion. By the time he replied, they had reached the door to her room.

She was almost concerned of what his reaction would be due to the uneasy silence he had withheld, but when she finally turned to face him, she saw a genuine smile tugging at his lips. “Thank you Princess.” His words were simple and heartfelt, and even if he never shared a single one of his heavy thoughts with her, she knew that he was aware that she was always willing to help him settle his problems. She stood on her toes briefly to kiss his cheek before opening her bedroom door. “Goodnight Shiro.” and with that, she had disappeared in her room.

......................................................................

When he returned to the medical bay, he wasn't particularly surprised to find Lance and Hunk sitting in the corner of the room, smothered under several layers of blankets. They were sharing a tablet, trying to watch some Altean movie, but Shiro could hear Hunk complaining about how bony Lance's elbow was, and Lance sniping back at him moodily. The floor of the castle wasn't very warm, and he knew it was unpleasant to sleep on, but they both seemed determined to stay in the room.

As he wandered over to them, he absently wondered were Keith had disappeared to.

“You'd probably be more comfortable in your beds. Or maybe a couch.” Shiro pestered as he snatched up another few blankets and dropped down beside Lance. They shifted the tablet over so he could see better and Lance threw his long legs over Shiro's lap.

“Coran said this movie is really good.” Lance shrugged, eyes trained on the screen.

“Is he awake?”

“No. He fell asleep while doing repairs to Blue's hangar. We told him to go to bed and he headed off in the general direction of his bedroom.”

“Nice.” Shiro said dryly as Hunk shrugged.

They were silent for a while longer, each trying to process the ridiculous plot that was in the movie. One of the actors had already turned into some kind of aquatic animal for seemingly no reason, and another had announced a need to eat every piece of tape that ever existed, except Shiro was fairly confident it wasn't a comedy. He would have to ask Coran later.

“Don't we have Earth movies?” Hunk eventually asked after one of the main characters had eaten another. He was obviously exhausted and ready to sleep, but too restless to actually manage it. He needed a better distraction.

“They're all on Pidge's laptop.” Lance mumbled, his chest squeezing at the mere mention of her name.

They were silent once again.

“How long does she had to stay in the pod?” Lance broke the silence as he turned to Shiro, bloodshot eyes drifting over to where Pidge was sleeping.

“Coran said she can probably come out tomorrow but that she'll be bound to bed rest for at least a few more days.” Shiro told him quietly.

Lance nodded and settled his head on Hunk's broad shoulder as he processed that information. After a short pause- “How do you think she'll react? Do you think she'll remember?”

Shiro is silent for a moment, his dark eyebrows furrowing momentarily before he nodded. “It may take some time for her to remember it all, but I doubt she will have forgotten.” He leaned in a little closer and slipped his arm behind Lance's shoulders, giving him a squeeze before clasping Hunk's arm. He knew how worried his boys were. They hadn't been their usual selves in days.

The haunted look had yet to abate from Hunk's eyes, Lance had yet to stop jigging his leg, and Keith...

Keith.

“I'm going to go hunt down Keith. I think it would be good with we all had a little talk.” Shiro mumbled before carefully dislodging himself from their huddle. “I'll be right back.”

......................................................

Despite how ill the energy transfer had made her, Allura finds almost immediately that she cannot sleep. She was completely exhausted, but there's a fierce ache in her chest that prevents her from properly closing her eyes. It twists and moans in sorrow and within minutes, she finds tears spilling down her cheeks once more.

The Green Lion was mourning, and her very own life force was feeling the tug from the lion's soul.

She closed her eyes and whispered over and over to Green that her paladin was going to be okay. That Pidge was healing and would be returned to her within days, but no amount of comforts would calm the grief radiating from her breast. Green would not be soothed, and Allura could understand. The lion had lost a part of herself and experienced a horror that could only be eased by the presence of her paladin, but it would be days until Pidge would be able to be with her lion again.

Eventually Allura dragged herself out of the plush comfort of her bed, slipped her warm robe on over her nightgown, and headed down to the hangar. It was always chilly in there, but Allura knew that Pidge had a defensive wall of space heaters set up around her work station to fight off the cold.

The Green lion was standing rigidly, and Allura felt her heart twist once more. Green was almost always sitting or lying down in a relaxed position. She was rarely anxious or jittery, but now anxiety seemed to radiate off her in waves. She seemed ready to pounce at an invisible enemy despite the fact that she was standing perfectly still. Allura sighed slightly and paced silently across the metal floor.

“I know you're scared, but she's going to be okay.” She said gently as she finally stood beneath the lions broad shoulders. “She's going to wake up tomorrow, and I'm sure she won't waste any time in coming to see you once she's able.” A short rumble filled the chamber, and Allura knew Green was still not pleased.

Well, the green lion was never known for her patience.

“I know.” Allura mumbled before carefully climbing onto one of the lion's large paws and pulling her knees to her chest. “It's going to be hard on Pidge.” A flash of sorrow echoed through her chest once more, and she knew that the lion wanted nothing but joy and contentment for her paladin, not the difficult trial that would come with losing a limb. She felt a soft heat begin to emit from the lions metal. “We're all going to do everything we can to make it be okay again. To find a new normal that she's comfortable in. But you... you will not change, and that will help. You're a piece of her, and that will never change, no matter how much everything else does. I suspect that you will be her rock. I know she has confided about her problems to you more than she has to the rest of us. Your presence in her mind will help.” Green seemed to shift slightly as she talked, some of the intensity leaking away.

It took over a Varga to ease the green lion into a laying position, but it feels better when the lion is more relaxed. She takes the time to explain how Pidge can dream, but that she's not in pain. She explains how her paladin is healing well, but how for the following days after her release from the pod that Pidge would be weak and exhausted, but otherwise alright. Eventually Green was placated, and Allura stopped talking out loud, instead just thought silently. Somehow, it felt like Green was probably still listening.

When Coran finally manages to track her down in the morning, he discovers her curled against the lion's massive paw in a considerably warmer hangar.

Similarly, Keith is also in none of his usual hiding spots. Shiro searches through his room, the training deck, the main control room, and all the best spots for star gazing, only to turn up nothing. He felt concern weighing heavily in his stomach when he finally tried Red's hangar and had his first bit of luck.

Red wasn't keen on opening up for anyone that wasn't Keith, but as soon as he enters the hangar, she opens her jaw wide for his entrance. She must have been really concerned about her paladin if she was willing to reveal where he was sulking without any prompting from Shiro. He didn't let the rare opportunity go to waste and boarded quickly, spotting Keith slouched in the captain's chair, gazing ahead blankly.

“Keith. Hey.” Shiro was careful not to startle him as he slipped into his sight on the side. When Keith looked up, Shiro was immediately drawn to the dark circles beneath his eyes and the wild angles of his hair.

He wondered if they all looked like absolute hell. He suspected they did. He knew that he personally was starting to grow a five o' clock shadow, but he couldn't bring himself to care enough to shave.

“We're all in the med bay. Pidge is going to wake up tomorrow most likely. I think we should all talk.” Shiro gave his shoulder a little squeeze. Keith nodded, but did not stand. Shiro wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around Keith and shake him until all of the painful thoughts were forced to leave Keith's brain. He had been with Pidge when it had all happened, and if it were not for him, she would have never made it out alive. As it was however, it seemed that Keith was struggling to think of anything but how Pidge had suffered while in his arms.

Shiro was careful not to push though. They were close, but they still had careful boundaries, and Keith was trying to self preserve by throwing up thick concrete walls around himself. If Keith had something on his mind, and he knew it would come out eventually, and no amount of pushing and prodding would make him say it a second sooner.

Finally Keith stood to follow him. Apparently it was not coming out today, and that was fine.

...........................................................

Their talk starts slowly, but eventually Shiro starts bringing up topics that none of them want to discuss, but that they all know need to be talked about. They're seated against the wall closest to Pidge and covered by layers of blankets. He had even gotten Keith to cuddle up with them. Despite the warm atmosphere, he could feel dread rolling off of them in waves. They didn't particularly want to chat.

“Shouldn't we have Allura and Coran here for this too?” Hunk asked quietly, his thumbs twiddling in nervousness.

“Allura needs her rest, and so does Coran. I will speak to them separately tomorrow.” Shiro answered. “We should talk now since none of you are sleeping anyway.

Lance scratched somewhat violently at his nose before letting his hand fall into his lap with a smack and Hunk sighed.

“Pidge had to do something that we never conceived possible when we started this journey against Zarkon. When she wakes up, I want to be as supportive as possible without smothering her.” Shiro spoke up eventually, which earned a nod out of the others.

“Pidge likes to be alone a lot.” He continued. “But she's going to need help doing things, and Coran said she's probably still going to be weak from loss of nutrients and blood. So we'll have to be careful to give her some space despite how much we're going to want to hover.”

“Do you think she'll remember what happened?” Keith asked suddenly, speaking up for the first time since joining the others.

“We were just talking about this earlier.” Shiro confessed as he gave Keith's leg a squeeze. “I suspect she will, but we won't know until she wakes up. Let's say she does, I think she would be more appreciative if we were just as honest as possible with the whole situation.”

Lance snorted next to him. “You're right, Pidge hates it when people beat around the bush. Anything she asks we should just- straight up tell her.”

Keith nodded. He had spent plenty of time with Pidge throughout the previous months, be it on missions or training or movies or when he caught her in _his_ stargazing spot. She used to drive him up the wall with her attitude and one track mind, but over the months he had quickly discovered that that was not the case at all, and that she was suffering greatly from the lost of her family and reduced to a ball of stress from her constant search to find them. They had grown close by pure accident. Her curiosity about him and his guilt for how he had treated her when she was about to leave the team meant they found each other interacting more than normal. And during those interactions he had learned that while she was brash and frighteningly smart, she could also be very friendly and compassionate.

Yet all he could picture when he saw her face was the way it had twisted in agony when he had managed to finally get her free.

“And what about her leg? Do Alteans have crutches? Is she strong enough for crutches?” Hunk asked, his voice hesitant but concerned.

“I talked to Allura earlier, and she said that the ship has the med bay fully stocked. She said there were a few different wheelchairs that would probably work until we got a leg up and running. If nothing else we can pit stop at an inhabited planet and dig around until something suits her needs. She sounded very eager to find something that would make everything easier for Pidge. I think she wanted to talk to you about the leg you're designing also.” Shiro told him.

“How long do you think she'll have to be in a chair? It's going to piss her off.” Keith murmured.

“Well, she'll probably be sleeping a lot for the next week while we try to get her healthy again. After that, I'd say it depends on how long it takes us to design the prosthetic. And hell, this is assuming she wants a prosthetic. Some people don't. I don't want to assume that much for her. Everything involved in what's to come will be completely up to her.” His words were firm, and while the thought of Pidge going the rest of her life without two legs to stand on seemed to make the other boys uncomfortable, they also seemed to agree that everything should depend entirely on what was best in Pidge's mind.

“Oh. Yeah. So, definitely don't baby her.” Lance said suddenly, his eyes lighting up. “She'll kill you if you treat her like she's helpless. If will really hurt her. She's always been pretty independent.” Thankfully, Everyone seemed to agree to that universally.

Eventually their conversation tapered off into more mundane things, and before they knew it, Coran and Allura were both walking into the bay and announcing that it was time to remove Pidge from the pod.

 


	2. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge wakes up. Keith has a nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a great time to write. It has been very enjoyable. Good luck for some of the squeamish parts- I got a little excited. Thanks to Sam for being my beta. She writes awesome fics for Voltron. Check her out at SmolGooDragon

Unsurprisingly, when the cryopod finally opened, Pidge was not awake. Shiro had, thankfully, predicted this, seeing as how the last time she had needed the pod she had slept for another six hours after rejoining them in the land of the living. With this new insight as to how her body handled the healing chambers, he and Lance were ready to grab her before she could collapse onto the floor, an accident they had just barely avoided the last time.

 

Shiro felt Hunk spring up beside him as Coran entered the command to open the pod. The glass dissolved quickly and the frigid air leaked into the med bay momentarily. Shiro reached forward before it had even completely opened and gripped Pidge by the underarms carefully, finally pulling her from the pod’s grasp and back into her team’s protective hands.

 

He should have expected her to be lighter than he was previously aware of, and yet when he gently drapes her onto his shoulder, he finds himself horrified by the obvious weight that had been lost with her leg. He had only held Pidge a handful of times when she was tired or lazy, but he had carried her enough to notice that now that he held her, she was significantly lighter than before. He knew how anatomy worked, and that limbs held a decent amount of bodily weight in them, but Pidge had been so small before that when he holds her now and she weighs even less…

 

It hits him as if Kaltenecker had just stomped on his chest.  

 

He only hesitates for a moment before snapping back to reality, and one glance around their little circle confirms that no one noticed- except maybe Allura, who always seemed to be paying close attention to him.

 

He supports Pidge with one arm and uses the other to tenderly push her head back some so he could see her face, a frown tugging at his lips upon noting that she was still unconscious.

 

“She awake?” Keith asked eagerly as he slipped forward to look at her over Shiro’s shoulder, his face betraying his emotions upon noticing that she was still asleep.

 

“No. Still out.” He confirms, hiking her up a bit higher on his hip before reaching to where Lance was holding a pile of blankets. “Let’s get her warmed up some and let her sleep it off. When she wakes up, we’ll get some fluids and food into her.”

 

With the help of Hunk and Allura, they manage to wrap Pidge in three layers of blankets from Allura’s closet, the ones she believed were the softest on the ship. Lance made a vaguely-displeased noise in his throat when he took in the sight of where Shiro had been forced to cut off the fabric closest to her stump when she had initially lost it. “Doesn’t she have some pajamas or something? Something cleaner?”

 

Shiro didn’t particularly want to look at what substances might have soiled the fabric around the stump, but he knew Lance was probably right about its cleanliness. Getting Pidge into the suit had been a mad dash of panic, and in the process they had reopened the tissue that Shiro had seared shut with his hand for the flight back to the castle. He had cut the pant leg off of her suit so they could put pressure on it while Coran readied the pod. Any amount of blood or pus could have ruined it.

 

“I’ll go grab something from her room. She won’t mind if I get it.” Hunk volunteered, which seemed to pacify the concerned look on Lance’s face. Pidge  _loathed_ when people went through her stuff without her permission, but Hunk spent enough time working with her in her room on their projects that he knew the general corner of the floor that she had folded all her clean laundry into. He wouldn’t have to displace any of her things to get to it.

………………………………

An hour later found them all in their most frequently-used common area. It was very similar to the gathering room outside of the lions' hangars, but instead of metal benches, the pit was full of plush couches and had a large, holographic screen in the center that Pidge had hooked up the their video game console. It was a larger room and had panels on the side that allowed for looking out at the stars as they traveled through space. Most of the time they kept the lights dimmed so they could watch whatever happened to be on the screen at that moment. They tended to meet in the pit after battles when they weren’t completely comfortable with being alone for the night but were too tired to do much else but lay on each other. It wasn’t uncommon to find one or more of the paladins asleep on the lavish couches, wrapped up in blankets.

 

Everyone was keeping their voices fairly low in an effort to keep from disturbing their sleeping teammate, but Shiro suspected that Pidge was going to sleep through any kind of outside stimulation until she was ready to wake up on her own. He sat with her resting against his chest, and, unsurprisingly, she had curled into his warmth naturally, her subconscious looking to rid herself of the chill that came with a stay in the healing pods.

 

Hunk had managed to find some pajamas, and they had tied a careful knot in the pant leg that was now empty, and tucked the extra fabric into the fabric so it wouldn't be bothersome. Something about the whole process had struck them all with a sense of reality, as well as practicality. There were thousands of people with missing limbs, Shiro included. While it all seemed daunting, life was going to go on. They would be able to make everything normal again, even if it didn't feel like it all the time.

 

They managed to go through two Altean movies (complete with Coran's amusing synopses) before Pidge finally began to stir. They had slowly moved from the topic of the movie and made the jump to their experiences at the Garrison.

 

“All I'm saying is that Mr. Kunz’s classes were complete bullshit. You can't  _hand back graded drafts of an essay the day before they are due!_ I mean, what the hell!? Even Pidge had to pull an all-nighter to get that stupid paper in on time. If she hadn't stayed behind to fix the printer for me in the lab, I would have gotten a zero for the whole damn thing.” Lance exclaimed, throwing his arms up at the memory and accidentally bopping Hunk in the nose. “Keith- do you remember how he would assign us the text to read, but then quiz us on totally unrelated matter? Like, I have no problem with studying the material- but I am not magic. I can't answer questions to a unit that we have never gone over!”

 

Keith shot forward from his previously lounging position like lightning. “That guy was an  _ass._ ”

 

“Boys-” Shiro piped up. There was really no need for them to cuss like that-

 

“He made me stay after class just so he could get my opinion on one of his stupid conspiracy theories. I get it. I like conspiracies too, but that guy was an utter nut. He was saying shit like the Holocaust didn't happen! And he kept expecting me to agree with him! What an idiot! There is hard proof- I can't-  _it was so outrageous!”_

 

“This man was qualified to be a teacher?” Coran asked skeptically. Altean education was taken very seriously, and teachers held the highest of honors in their society. The idea of a man of such questionable thinking in a teaching position was unheard of.

“Oh yeah. He was like ninety years old and super cynical, but he was one of the guys who worked on the math that was involved with the Mars Project, so he had really high connections, and basically refused to retire. He was never even supposed to be a teacher, but when the Garrison gave him the opportunity, he took it, and ruined my love for biological science. It was miserable.” Hunk spoke up, sitting up to be level with Lance and Keith.

 

“You all speak of your schooling as though it was actually torturous.” Allura said, eyes wide at the concept. She had enjoyed school very much, despite her small class size of herself and the children from her father's closest officials. 

 

“It wasn't always. The simulators were okay, even though they could get boring sometimes.” Keith shrugged. “They were always the same.”

 

“Speak for yourself. I vomited every single stupid time,” Hunk threw himself back against the cushions. “We never even passed the sim, Lance. We never even passed the sim and now we are in space piloting huge, supernatural alien ships.”

 

“Speak for yourself. I love Blue. I would choose her over one of Iverson's weak-ass ships any day.” Lance's face was smug as he thought back to their horrid instructor. “I wish he could see how far we've come, some novice astronauts he thought we were. He thought we were the scum of the Earth.”

 

“They're supposed to act like that.” Keith said, a hint of confusion seeping into his voice at Lance's pure dislike of the man. He hadn't liked him either, but that had been the entire point. Iverson hadn’t been there to make them like him. He had been there to shape them into the condition they needed to be in.

 

“No way. That jerk always took it too far. He enjoyed it too much. He was always baiting Pidge, and making fun of Hunk, and reminding me that I was a replacement. He was a total ass.”

 

Keith hadn't been there for that part of their Garrison experience. Iverson had always just told him ‘good job’ and then shouted at the others. It wasn't until he started churning up trouble that Iverson turned his sights on him, and Keith had always figured the guy was justified in his reactions. But if he was treating his friends like crap, then that wasn't okay. It wasn't okay at all, actually. It made his chest twinge with anger, but it mostly just made his temples ache with the frustration that he couldn't do anything to right the wrong they had been subjected to.

 

“Did Pidge ever tell you about the times she sneaked into his office and hacked his computer?” Shiro asked with a smile in his voice. He subconsciously tightened his grip on the limp girl in his arms. She had seemed to have thawed out some, no longer radiating cold, but warmth.

 

The others perked up immediately, and he knew he had their attention. He felt a little guilty at sharing a story that was Pidge's to tell, but he was pretty sure she wouldn't mind.

 

“She told me a few weeks ago. It's why she had to make a fake identity to get into Garrison. She had been officially banned form the premises because she hacked into their systems and uncovered information about Kerberos. It’s the only reason she knew we were alive, because Iverson was certainly not releasing the feeds from the ship. She told me it was one of the first times she had put her tech experience to use-  _by sneaking into a classified area and hacking into government feeds and files.”_

 

Hunk practically exploded into laughter with Lance while Keith nodded. “Yeah. Yeah that sounds like her.”

 

A soft noise came from Shiro’s shoulder and made him flinch before he looked down to the girl resting against his chest. Pidge’s face was slack for a moment before twisting unpleasantly as her eyelids finally fluttered open. She squinted up at Shiro before grunting vaguely and closing her eyes again. Shiro couldn’t help but smirk at her typical reaction.

 

He had caught everyone else’s attention as well. The conversation tapered off quickly while they all watched.

 

Allura turned to Coran. “Would you mind getting some water, Coran?” Together they rose, and Coran went quickly to the kitchen and Allura sat against Shiro's hip, close enough that she could see Pidge's face. She reached forward gently and brushed her bangs back from her face. Pidge's eyes fluttered open again at the warm touch. “Hang on. You need to drink some water before you go back to sleep.” Pidge blinked at her, and Allura felt concern weigh in her stomach at how lethargic she was acting. Pidge had a history of struggling to wake up from the pods, but usually once she was awake she was ready to talk and get up. Now, however, Pidge seemed content to just lay in the cocoon they had wrapped her in and go back to sleep.

 

It took a lot of effort to keep Pidge awake long enough to down a pouch of water, and even then she didn’t speak and only reacted when she was spoken to. Shiro would give her a little shake when she got too unresponsive, but eventually they let her slip back into sleep. She was still asleep when the clock announced it was the beginning of the night cycle. Lance was already out cold and drooling on Hunk's shoulder, and Keith had given up on sitting and had fallen asleep face-down on the cushions.

 

Allura and Coran had gone off a few hours earlier with the task of insuring they would not be found by any Galra. They had to keep relocating the ship to ensure their signals were not being traced. Without Pidge they wouldn’t be able to form Voltron, and that was a huge disadvantage when it came to protecting the castle and protecting others. They would probably do alright with the four lions, but it was not the same, and with how everyone had been acting, Shiro suspected the boys would be far too distracted to fight their best fight. Learning how to use the Galra finder without Pidge’s expertise was tricky, but with Hunk’s help, they had managed to make it work, and with it, they were safe in hiding until they came up with a game plan for Pidge’s rehabilitation.

 

When Hunk started snoring so loud he woke himself up for the third time, Shiro decided it was time for everyone to go to bed.

 

Herding everyone to their rooms while carrying Pidge made things a little more difficult than usual, but he managed it. Eventually he made it to her room. He laid her down on her bed, careful to tuck a few pillows around her with the blankets, and then retrieved an extra pillow and blanket from the storage closet down the hall. After checking on her one last time, he settled himself on the floor and slowly fell asleep to the sound of her gentle breathing.

 

………………………………………………

  _She was going to die before he could reach her. He could hear her struggled thrashing beginning to quiet with each moment that he took to climb down the rubble to where she was trying to wait for him. The muck from the rain and the floods threatened to swallow his feet multiple times, and he had to focus to keep from losing his footing and go tumbling down into the silo himself._

 

“ _Pidge! Please- Hang on- I'm right here! I'm almost there- Just hang on a second longer!” He didn't mean to keep shouting at her, but he could hear her splashing in the water, and every now and again there would be a lull in the noise. She was growing tired. He didn't know how long she had been in there._

 

_Finally he reached a ledge constructed of unstable rubble, and fell to his knees to look over the side into the water where he knew Pidge was trying to remain afloat._

 

_What he saw would be burned in his mind forever._

 

_The strange alien silo was almost completely underground in the soft mud of the river bank, and it was almost completely full of water. Thick chucks of the collapsed building stuck out of it like razors, and had turned to water into a muddy brown. He hadn't been able to get a good look at the silo from the outside, but he suspected that it had to be at least fifty feet deep, but now it was spilling over with water._

 

_And Pidge was at the edge of it, trying valiantly to remain above the surface, but her movements were sloppy and uncoordinated. She was swimming in a much darker section of water, and it took Keith a moment to register why the water around her seemed to be tinted black, much darker than the rest in the dim lighting._

 

_It wasn't black at all. It was **red.**_

 

_As soon as she set eyes on him, she yelled his name and tried to grip a piece of rubble so she could propel herself over to him easier. It crumbled under her fingers however and she went under with a cry. Keith nearly dove into the water that very second, and only managed to restrain himself by remembering that if they were both in the water, they would both drown. There was no way out of the silo but from the rocky overhang that Keith was kneeling on, and it wasn't assailable from the water, which was why Pidge had been unable to free herself._

 

_She resurfaced a moment later, and he immediately responded. “You're okay! You're okay- Just get as close to me as you can! You can do this!” Her bangs were sticking to her face and she furiously wiped her eyes against his shoulder to free her vision once more. The blackness that surrounded her in the water was only growing with each second, and Keith was horrified at the thought of what injury she might have acquired under the water to cause such blood output._

 

_He watched as she tried her damn hardest to swim to him, and he reached forward as far as he possibly could. At last she was within reach, and he snatched her arm up with both of his and hauled her out of the water with one ferocious pull. They fell back from the ledge and he scrambled some to make sure she was fully freed before finally looking to her._

 

_She fell onto her side to cough and sputter up the water that she had swallowed during her ordeal, and he sat up quickly to help keep her from collapsing into her own puddle of vomit. She doesn't seem aware of him, only convulses in his arms from the force of her retching._

 

_He took a moment to glance over her to find the source of the blood, and feels bile rush to his mouth the second he lays eyes on the mangled remains of her leg._

 

_It wasn't there._

 

_Her leg wasn't there._

 

_**It wasn't fucking there.** _

 

_He sucked the humid air into his lungs and nearly threw up at the thought that **Pidge's leg was fucking missing,** and tired to instead force his brain past the debilitating phase of shock and into the productive stage of action. He had to do something- He- He looked at it once more to assess how awful it was. Maybe if he could wrap his mind around it... _

 

_But it was so saturated with thick muck that he couldn't tell if he was looking at muscle or skin or blood or- no, he could tell that part was bone. It jutted out near the center- there was so much blood. The water had washed most of it away, but now that they were on land it had begun to coat absolutely everything in crimson. It crept up her thigh and on his hands and was smeared all the way from where he had dragged her away from the ledge. There was so much-_

 

_He looked away again and swallowed his stomach contents. He could not break. He couldn't. **She needed him.**_

 

_While he was trying to process the horror that was now Pidge's small body, she had gone frighteningly still, and he carefully flipped her onto her back where he could see her face. Vomit stained her chin and her hair was plastered to her skull with the mud from the river. The most alarming thing he noticed was the dangerous gray tint her skin had, or the glassy sheen that coated her eyes._

 

“ _Pidge- god. It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna get you back to the castle, and it's going to be okay. Just stay with me.” He firmly patted her cheek and gave her a shake until she finally looked at him. Her reactions were distressingly slow, but she nodded once he had her attention. “Okay. Okay, hang on.”_

 

_He had already contacted the team when he had learned that Pidge might be in trouble, but things had changed. He needed them here now. He activated the comms in his helmet. “Shiro! Shiro- I have Pidge- It's bad. It's really bad, and she's going to die soon if I can't get her to the castle-”_

 

“ _Keith! Calm down! I'm almost to your location. I'm about three minutes out. What happened?” Shiro was obviously panting, and Keith figured he was running to them. He must have been closer to them than his lion._

 

“ _It's her leg, Shiro. It's bad. It's- we need to make it stop bleeding, but I don't have anything.”_

 

“ _Okay. Get her back to ground level. I'll be right there. Just get as far from that river as possible. Its not safe.” Normally such an obvious statement would make Keith snort, but he had no humor in his bones at that moment. Instead he turned back to Pidge._

 

“ _We're gonna climb out of here Pidge. It's going to suck, but you can do it okay? I'm going to carry you.” He looked up at all the rubble he had climbed down to get to the silo, and realized he wasn't sure if he would be able to get them back up without the use of his hands._

 

_Pidge was also looking at the climb in front of them, and shakily pushed herself onto her elbows. “Carry me on your back. I-I'll hold on so you can have your hands. If I'm going to pass out, I'll tell you.” Her words were raspy from he vomiting, but there was steel in there too. Pidge was determined to get back to the top. She was shaking feverishly and her skin looked almost translucent it was so pale, but she had that damn look in her eye._

 

_Keith didn't have much choice but to agree. He needed to have use of his hands for as long as possible for the unstable terrain._

 

_Getting her onto his back took a lot of shifting and a lot of energy from her, and by the time she was settled she had begun shaking in agony, and he could feel the muscles of her thigh twitching erratically against his side. He clung to her arms for a moment to reassure himself that she wouldn't fall off the second he let go, and eventually she gave him the all clear, and they began to climb out of the ruins of the mudslide._

 

_He knew she was trying to stifle her gasps of pain, but he suspected that each movement he made jolted her just enough to arduous, and he tried his very hardest not to bump the injured limb, because it was close to his own legs and when he climbed he nearly set her unconscious a few times. Despite their struggle though, she remained awake._

 

“ _What happened? The villager said you went down here to find a child, but that you never returned-”_

 

“ _The mudslide got us-us.” Her words were wispy and her mouth sounded dry. “And the river- I-I-I didn't know. Got trapped, under the rubble. But the water- was- it was rising.” She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. “I was going to drown-” Her grip tightened around his shoulders. “My leg- was caught- and the water was rising- I didn't have my helmet-”_

 

_He had to stop in his trek. He couldn't-_

 

“ _I was going to drown- Keith- was- I was going to drown- I had no choice-”_

 

_It takes every single nerve in his body to keep himself from finally throwing up right then and there._

 

_She had done it herself, with her bayard. She'd done it herself-_

 

_She'd-_

 

_The girl on his back suddenly lost her grip as she went limp, and he bent nearly in half to prevent her from falling to the ground. It took a lot of careful maneuvering to get her from his back and into his arms._

 

_Her eyes had glossed over but she was still mumbling feverishly, and he clutched her to his chest when he heard a familiar voice above him._

 

“ _Keith!”_

 

“ _Oh thank god.”_

 

_Getting the rest of the way out was harder while cradling Pidge, but he managed with Shiro's eyes guiding him and telling him where the best path was. Finally he was free from the rubble and back in the muck of the bloody planet. It took him a moment to realize that he had not told Shiro what exactly was wrong with Pidge's leg- like the fact that it wasn't there. He had to give Shiro credit though, because he snapped to action must faster than Keith had._

 

_Shiro stepped against him and used his flesh fingers to find the pulse at Pidge's neck. If Keith noticed his subtle sigh of relief, he didn't mention it._

 

“ _Keith- where's your lion? We have to get back to the castle.” Shiro glanced around on the horizon for Red before Keith even had the words out of his mouth._

 

“ _Too far. She's at least fifteen minutes away. We don't have that long-”_

 

“ _Okay. Okay. We'll have to-” Shiro shook his head violently and held out his arms, where Keith gently deposited Pidge. She had lost consciousness completely while Keith finally made it out of the rubble. “I'll have to- **fuck.** I'll have to burn it. It'll stop the bleeding long enough for us to get to your lion.” Shiro knelt quickly and placed Pidge on the ground while Keith remained standing in shock. _

 

_Duh. It was the obvious solution. Gruesome and barbaric maybe, but it would work. Maybe it would save her life. And yet Keith couldn't make his legs do as he told. He could only see how impossibly small she looked laying on the ground, covered in filth and blood. Her hair was still soaked, and as they were pelted with rain, the blood started to from swirls in the water puddles._

 

“ _-eith, buddy. Keith.” After a moment of trying to get the red paladin's attention, Shiro was finally successful. “Keith, I know this looks bad, but we gotta do this. I need your help right now. I need you.” Keith hesitated before he nodded and dropped to his knees with a thawp in the mud. “I don't want to hurt her anymore than I have to, but she might come around. Just- try to keep her still if she does okay?”_

 

_His brain was still numb, so he nodded anyway and placed his hands firmly on her frail shoulders._

 

_And from the corner of his eye's he saw Shiro's hand start to glow purple._

 

_And the burning began._

 

_And so did the screaming-_

 

_And the smoke_

 

_And the smell-_

 

_And the begging-_

 

Keith stumbled out of bed and lunged for the small trashcan he had next to the door, vomiting in it desperately. He coughed and gagged for what felt was an infinite amount of time while his brain spun the images of blackened flesh over and over again in his mind.

 

He threw up until he had no more food left in his stomach.

 

He needed to see her- just to make sure she was okay.

 

Just to make sure she was alive.

… _.........................................................................._

Shiro was awakened violently by the sound of the door sliding open, and he sat up so quickly that dots danced in front of his eyes momentarily. Thankfully the lights in the halls were also dimmed so he could make out his visitor fairly well.

 

Keith stepped inside the room and shrugged at him. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice was wide awake but his hair was disheveled with sleep, and at some point he must have changed into a pair of sweats.

 

“It’s alright. Are you okay?” Shiro had left on very soft lighting when he had fallen asleep so he would be able to see Pidge, and in the faint lighting he could notice the haunted look in Keith’s eyes under a fog of sleep. Keith shrugged at him once more instead of answering. After a moment in shared silence, Keith wandered over to where Pidge was fast asleep and sat on the edge of the bed.

 

“Has she woken up at all?” He asked without looking away from her.

 

“Not yet, though I think she’s been moving a little more, which is good.”

 

Keith hummed softly and tucked his hands in his lap.

 

Shiro couldn’t help but recall the state he had found him in. Keith had been the first person to discover Pidge and had ultimately been the one to pull her to safety. He hadn’t spoken a word of it to any of the others, but when Shiro had finally reached them, he was clutching Pidge’s limp body to his chest and stumbling forward blindly in the mud. They had both been completely saturated in blood and muck and it took two hours to pry Keith away from the pod and force him into the shower. Shiro didn’t know what Keith had seen or heard, or what Pidge might have said before she fell unconscious, and Keith wasn’t exactly sharing.

 

He was worried. He knows for a fact that, if he had he found any of his fellow paladins drowning after hacking their leg off, he would be a mess. He also knew for a fact that Keith and Pidge shared a special bond as the arms of Voltron. They had fought constantly in the beginning, but over time, they realized it was because their personalities were painfully similar. They were both headstrong and determined in their goals, and both were ornery as hell. Pidge tended to think about things a little more before taking action than Keith did, but Shiro could also remember plenty of times when Keith had been the voice of reason in Pidge’s head. They were the two most reclusive paladins of their group, and sometimes he caught them hanging around each other simply because they both enjoyed the silence as much as the other.

 

And Keith had held her while she had been bleeding out in his arms.

 

“Couldn’t sleep?” Shiro tried to keep his voice sounding innocent enough, but by Keith’s look, he knew he wasn’t doing a very good job at hiding his concern.

 

“No.” His posture slumped some then, and he hunched over. “I… I just wanted to see if she was awake.”

 

Shiro nodded and laid back down. “Go grab a blanket. Might as well hang around, right?”

 

Keith shrugged for the third time, but then quickly got up to go retrieve his bedlinens, and Shiro knew that he had been waiting for the offer to stay.

 

Within the hour, both boys had fallen back asleep, with Keith laying closest to Pidge, his back facing Shiro.

 

And two hours later, they were woken up again by a soft question.

 

“Guys…?”

 

Keith grunted blearily and sat up on his elbows, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Shiro shifted some, but seemed to stay asleep. A tick passed, and he realized who had spoken.

 

“Pidge- Hey- You’re awake.“ He sat up fully and crawled to his knees where he could kneel by her bed. She had also propped herself up on her elbows and was rubbing vigorously at one of her eyes with the heel of her hand. She didn't say anything right away, but when she looked at him, her eyes squinting in the low light, he could make out the confusion on her face.

 

“I feel like I've been asleep for years. What day is it...?” Her voice was thick with confusion and sleep, and she let her hand fall into her lap with a slap.

 

“Wednesday. You were in the pod. You slept through yesterday. That's probably why you feel so sleepy.”

 

She was still glaring into the darkness, and he could see her mind processing that information. Her squinting increased for a moment before she finally turned her gaze to her legs.

 

“The pod. Oh.  _Oh.”_ Her face went slack in surprise, and Keith found himself sliding up next to her in concern. He kicked at his pillow blindly until it flipped onto Shiro's face, effectively waking him up.

 

She was still staring at the void in the blankets where her leg should have been, her hands hovering hesitantly above it, but not daring to touch. Keith could not for the life of him figure out what was going through her mind. How do you react to losing a fucking  _limb_? Did she remember? Did she know how? Was she mad- or resentful- was she awed, or struck aghast? Was- was she regretful?

 

The only emotion he could see on her face was surprise, and he didn't know what that meant.

 

“Oh- Pidge-” Shiro stumbled slightly as he quickly rose to his feet only to immediately trip over Keith's blanket. He eventually landed next to Keith on the bed, his sharp mind taking in the situation as Pidge carefully reached forward with both hands and clasped them around her new stump. “Pidge, hey.”

 

She made a slightly strangled noise before coughing abruptly. “I... I _somehow..._  managed to forget? Forget this small- thing-” She gestured wildly at the stump and coughed again, turning her face away from them quickly. Her voice held a mixture of hesitation and embarrassment, each word an octave higher than usual. She hiccuped next to them, and didn't turn back at their voices. Keith reached forward and squeezed her shoulders tightly, which provoked a smothered sob from her hidden face. Shiro watched as Keith's face crumbled into despair as he wrapped his arms around her and moved to hold her slender form.

 

She shook her head violently and actually tugged away from him, her chest heaving forcibly with each breath. Eventually she relented and slumped into his grip, hiding her face against his shoulder as she wept. Keith felt hot tears pool in his eyes as he held her so tightly that his own muscles ached from the strain, and he suspected he might leave bruises on her. Normally he would never do anything he thought might hurt her, but sometimes you just needed to be held that tightly, and if the way she is shaking is any indication, he would hold her like this for the rest of his life if it brought her some comfort. 

 

Shiro looked miserable next to him, but eventually he pushed a few tear-soaked bangs away from Pidge's face as she shook. “I'm going to grab some water.” Keith nodded mutely in response.

 

By the time Shiro returned, Pidge had begun to cry herself out, and was no longer making such sorrowful noises. She now just shook and occasionally sobbed, each sound that came from her painfully muffled.

 

If he hadn't been expecting this reaction, Shiro would have been horrified at seeing his little hellion so devastated.

 

Hell, he's still pretty horrified.

 

He got her attention enough to offer her the water, which she accepted gratefully, her trembling fingers closing around the glass tightly. She hiccuped and used her sleeve to wipe off the snot and tears from her cheeks, but when she spoke, her voice was still unsteady. “I- I can't believe I forgot-” She hiccuped harshly, nearly spilling her water. “I'm okay. I just- I forgot- and then I remembered- And I saw it- I'm okay. Really.” It would have been more convincing if she hadn't let that one stray sob sneak in there, and she wipes at her eyes once more. Her teammates are reflecting distress back at her, and she felt a few more tears leak out of her eyes at their distraught faces.

 

She could feel their love radiating throughout the room, and when she threw it onto the shock of the state of her leg, it made the tears increase, but she was done sobbing. She was. “Really, I am.” At some point she had practically crawled into Keith's lap, and she felt a slightly hysterical snort creep up on her at the picture they must paint.

 

She takes another sip of the water, willing her hands to steady. Once she finished, she set it aside and looked to where Shiro was waiting for his opportunity to catch her attention.

 

He leaned forward to her and took both of her hands into his, squeezing firmly. “I am so glad that you are alive.” His words were thick and slow, and she could see a dark thunderstorm of emotions in his eyes. His gaze never separated from hers, and she felt herself affected by his intensity. When she felt her bottom lip tremble, she bit down on it, hard. She wasn't sure she had any more tears she could spare, but when she reached for him the same way a child reaches for their parents, he picked her up and clutched her to his strong chest and buried his face in her hair. “ _I am so glad, Pidge.”_ She wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and allowed herself to be held.

 

“I am so grateful that you are here. We are going to make this okay. Hunk and Coran already have ideas, and they say it wouldn't take long to construct a leg. We're going to get you back onto your feet. This is a temporary thing,  _I swear._ ”

She nodded feverishly against his collarbone, and  _dammit_  she was crying again. He just sounded so  _sure-_ she couldn't help but believe him. So she did. She believed every word he said, and let herself find comfort in the fact that she was not alone, and that she was going to be okay. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please review!


	3. Affiliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and the Green Lion reconnect. The team gets a taste of what led up to the moments when Pidge was trapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shorter chapter because school is starting back up and I have a lot to study for. Going to keep this ball rolling.

Pidge felt immense relief the second she set eyes on her lion. Green had been calling out to her for hours, ever since she woke up with the boys that morning. Shiro had insisted she eat before they converged in the hangar, and she had never technically agreed, but since he was mostly just carrying her to where she wanted she hadn't had much of a choice but to put her lion on hold.

 

Green was standing up at her full height, a strange position to catch her in if the team wasn't preparing for battle. Pidge could feel both excitement and trepidation rolling off of her in waves; her lion was very distressed about her. Pidge felt a familiar tug in her ribs, as if someone had reached inside of her and was gently leading her onward. The pull was much more insistent now that she was closer to Green. She had been feeling it all morning, and it had been one of the last things she had felt before she must have lost consciousness when her team was transporting her back to the castle on the night she had lost her leg.

 

If she thought back hard enough, she could recall hearing Green's voice speaking to her while she was bleeding out. Everything had been a mixture of overstimulating sounds and colors, and there had been agonizing pain, but there had also been her voice. For awhile she had mistaken her lion's words as one of her teammates speaking to her, but it had not taken long for her to have realized her mistake. Green had come to her in a time of fear and desperation, spoke calming words, and wrapped around her subconscious like a fierce protector.

 

She wished she could hear Green now. Just hearing her rough voice in her brain had been comforting and familiar, even though she had never experienced it before. She had always known that the paladin bond was a force of incomprehensible love, but to undergo it was magnificent. That shared connection had been hypnotic.

 

Pidge felt almost like she was seeing her lion for the first time in that foreign forest as she saw Green standing in the hangar. In one of the worst moments of her life, she had gained something monumental.

 

After a moment Lance looked over his shoulder to where she rested on his back. He gave her legs a little squeeze to get her attention. “Hey- you're awfully quiet. You okay?” He and Hunk had been ecstatic upon seeing her awake at breakfast, and had volunteered immediately to carry her down to Green's hangar. Allura had seemed concerned initially about the other paladins simply carrying her places when it seemed safer that Pidge have a means of getting around on her own, but when Pidge had slowly curled in on herself at the notion, Allura had let it go. She seemed to understand the concept that Pidge wasn't ready to face that part of her new reality yet, and wanted to be as close to her friends as possible.

 

Pidge was extremely grateful for that. In fact, she had a lot to be grateful towards Allura for...

 

“Pidge?”

 

“Yeah, I'm okay. Just spacey.” She picked her head off his shoulder and looked over at Hunk. “We should go inside Green. I want to see if she will try to talk to me again.”

 

“But the lions talk to us all the time?” Hunk asked as Pidge reached up at her lion, prompting Green to lower herself to the floor and allow them all inside “What do you mean?”

 

“I don't remember super well, but I think she spoke to me while you guys were getting me back to the castle.” Pidge murmured, all of her focus on the lion.

 

“I was hoping you were unconscious for that entire thing.” Lance's voice was low and dark, but he didn't seem eager to think back to that day.

 

“Eh, I was in a kind of a twilight zone I guess. I don't remember much, but I do remember her. And she wasn't just sending me pictures. She was speaking- like words- human tongue. It was really cool.” Lance stepped into the cockpit in front of Hunk, and Pidge ran her fingertips along the ceiling, which she could easily touch from Lance's back. As soon as she made physical contact, the room lit up in green and all the controls came on. An epiphany of light exploded behind her eyelids and knocked her silly for a moment, before she felt the familiar feeling of her lion pressing against her conscious mind. Green felt warm and reassuring, and to Pidge, her presence was as real and tangible as Lance's shoulder's beneath her hands.

 

Pidge felt hot tears spring to her eyes. She knew that something had gone terribly wrong once they had gotten to the castle, and that Allura had saved her, but she hadn't realized that she and Green had nearly lost all connection with each other. She must have really been in serious trouble to have been separated from her lion so far. Reestablishing that link felt like finally being able to breathe properly again.

 

“Hey- maybe this is too much Lance-” Hunk had noticed her tears as she ran her fingertips along Green's paneling. “She just woke up-”

 

“I'm fine. I just missed her, and I didn't realize it.” Pidge whispered, wiping her eyes with her hands quickly. “Let me sit in the pilot's seat.” Lance set forward and carefully lowered her with Hunk's help until she was seated, then stood and went to the side.

 

It was like she had sent a spark on a pile of gunpowder. Green swept into her head and filled it up completely, and Pidge did the same to the lion. They had a new shared head-space, as though their minds were one.

 

Pidge could finally hear her.

 

**You have come back to me alive.**

 

Greens voice was deep and rough- and obviously otherworldly. It just felt celestial and ethereal, and it echoed off her skull. It was magnificent, and Pidge felt like she had known it her entire life. It seemed more natural to hear her voice than it did to hear the voice of the others around her.

 

“I'm alive- yeah.” She was almost embarrassed by how wet and saturated her voice sounded, but she realized she had no reason to be. Green was in her mind- she understood that Pidge was overwhelmed and tired- she already knew all the emotions Pidge was experiencing. Pidge didn't have to try to be tough for her lion.

 

**I am sorry about your leg. I tried to reach you. I should have destroyed the whole hangar.**

 

“Coran told me you did a number on the hangar door.” She felt sorrow pull at her heart as she imagined her lion slamming against it in an effort to get to her. It was an action of desperation, and Pidge had never felt anything but fierce confidence and ease from her lion. It was all too backwards. She had always been the uncertain and afraid one.

 

“Pidge! What're talking about? Is it Green?” Lance's voice finally filtered through her amazement with her lion, and she remembered that she wasn't alone. She felt blood rush to her face at how ridiculous she must have looked, talking to a voice that they could not hear.

 

“Yeah. It's Green. She's talking again.”

 

“What's she saying?” Hunk asked curiously, leaning in closer to her as though if he listened hard enough, he would be able to hear it too.

 

“Just that she tried to break out of the hangar when she felt that I was trapped.”

 

“Oh. Well, yeah. Can't blame her.” Lance shrugged as he glanced out the side panel to look at the hangar doors. “She almost did- it looks like. Damn. Those things are super tough. I'm impressed. I wonder why she stopped? I think she was almost through.”

 

Pidge felt a sudden wave of unease wash over her so quickly that bile rushed into her throat. Green seemed to suddenly vibrate around them all with restlessness. She knew exactly why Green had stopped. She had been too far gone to save, and their connection had been nearly lost. Her lion had probably not known where to go or what to do to find her paladin.

 

The boys picked up on the sudden gray pallor of her skin immediately. “Maybe we should go back to the main part of the castle. It's warmer there- and you did just wake up. I'll never forgive myself if you get sick.” Hunk bend down a little but didn't dare touch her.

 

Pidge found herself digging her fingernails into the fabric on the captain's chair. She wasn't ready to lose her connection to her lion by leaving yet. “Coran said I'm fully healed.”

 

“He also said you should still have at least a few days of nothing but rest and reshipment. He said you could get sick.” Lance reminded her, his voice casual but still pressing.

 

She wasn't ready. She had almost lost her-

 

**You and I are one now. I will be with you even when we are apart. You need to take care of yourself. I will still be able to speak with you.**

 

Pidge didn't want to relent. She wanted to be stubborn and insist on staying, but the hangar was absolutely freezing and she couldn't get rid of the feeling of vomit threatening to overcome her. Laying down didn't seem like that bad of an idea.

 

**Go cub. I will be here still. You have earned your rest.**

 

After a moment she nodded and didn't protest when Lance wrapped his arms around her and picked her up to settle on his hip.

 

“We should have brought a blanket for you. I didn't even think about that.” Hunk frowned as he watched her lay her head on Lance's collar.

 

Pidge shrugged. “I'm fine.”

 

By the time they had made it back to the main section of the castle, Pidge had nearly fallen asleep on Lance's shoulder.

 

…................................................................................................

 

_Pidge stripped off her helmet and set it against her hip as she sucked in a deep breath of the humid air. Rain pelted the soil around her and she took a moment to appreciate the fresh air rushing into her lungs. She would always be grateful for her protective armor, but she would never get over how stifling it could be when they had to stay in it for long periods of time. It generally had good ventilation, but one could only wear heavy clothes for so long before they became stiff with sweat._

 

_Currently she was completely plastered with mud and small pieces of rock from helping the Keloians evacuate their homes and residences. The planet the paladins where currently assisting had been attacked by the Galran in a cowardly sort of guerrilla warfare. Ships had descended from the sky and bombed their cities to pieces while setting heavy fire on all of their dams and water supplies, resulting in immediate and catastrophic flooding. Houses and public buildings had been swept away in the planets vast oceans and lakes, and the loose soil had quickly turned to mud and destroyed everything else. The damage from the water was bad, but Pidge suspected that the Glara chose to bomb the water containment because of the mud specifically. Houses were sinking or being cleared away by the new mud rivers that were flowing down the streets. Almost all the livestock was already dead or impossible to reach, and all the crops were ruined as well. There wasn't much the paladins could do but try to save as many people as possible and help relocate them until the Keloian government came up with a game plan._

 

_And to top it all of, it was raining. Which made everyone even more miserable than they were before._

 

_With each Keloian Pidge helped escape their sinking house, Pidge felt a burning rage tear through her heart. The people here were strong but terrified, and they had all worked hard on their homes and lives. Now everything was impossibly ruined and Pidge wasn't entirely sure there was going to be anyway to completely restore what the Galra had taken from them. It was all so fucked up, and Pidge hated that she couldn't do anything to make it better other than try to make sure the people escaped with their lives. There was already a massive casualty count from the poor souls who had been swept away in mud slides or crushed by rubble from collapsing houses. There was debris everywhere and coating everything._

 

_It was hard to look at, but Pidge persisted. She knew who she was and what needed to be done. She was needed to save lives, and that was what she was going to do._

 

_However for a moment there was a lull in the activity so she paused and stopped, plopping down on a piece of building that she was fairly certain wouldn't give out under her weight. She stripped off her shoulder pads and helmet to get some air and rain on her skin. She knew she smelled awful, but so did the mud, so she didn't care. She and the other paladins had split off to tackle different tasks where their expertise was needed, and Pidge found herself wishing she had brought Green down with them. They had all traveled in Black and Red because of the lack of ground that was suitable for landing, but if she had brought Green, she would have extra water than the few packs she had already drank. Also Green was great at moving things- like buildings that had collapsed on people._

 

_Not that it mattered much. She hadn't been doing all the heavy lifting like Hunk was. She was the smallest and could squeeze through things much better than the Keloians could. She had spent a lot of the time army crawling on her belly to take supplies to trapped people or to help guide them out of tight spaces. It was claustrophobic sometimes, but Pidge understood that sometimes things just needed to be done, and she was the best for the job._

 

_Now though she was utterly covered in filth. Despite the fact that she had been wearing her helmet all day, she had still managed to get mud and river water on her face and in her hair. The armor on her legs and feet had thankfully managed to keep the water out, but Pidge could still feel the stiff damp sensation on her feet that happened when she sweat too much. All the rain had made the atmosphere humid as hell- which meant absolutely everyone was sticky with sweat._

 

_There were very few people milling around the area she was in. Most people had already fled in fear and were being flown off the planet by support ships. She had almost completely evacuated her region and all she really needed to do was give it a once over to make sure everyone was taken care of._

 

_Just as she was about the stand up and get started on working again, a very terrified looking Keloian found her. The Keloian people were bipedal and had a sickly blue looking skin, though Pidge had noticed that some took on more greenish hues than others. They had heads that didn't quite fit on their shoulders and three pairs of arms, but their otherwise reminded Pidge of humans. They didn't bother with wearing any clothing, and didn't seem to have any embarrassment towards any bodily parts. When Hunk had asked about it, their leader had explained that they had simply never developed a culture where their bodies became something to hide. They much preferred to be free and occasionally wear various items of jewelry rather than clothing._

 

_Pidge had thought it would make her uncomfortable, but she found that she didn't really care. In fact, she rather liked the idea of not having to wash clothes and to not be ashamed by her body. Plus, no clothing meant that the Keloian people didn't get their clothing stuck on things while she was trying to help them escape._

 

_The Keloian in front of her now was a darker shade of blue, and was bent over in wheezes as he tried to breathe. Pidge had to bend down to catch what he was saying._

 

“ _There's- there's a child. A kid- stuck- Stuck in the silo. She must have been playing but she's gotten stuck. I can hear her.”_

 

“ _Okay. Show me where.”_

 

_They sprint together off to the silo where the girl must be trapped, and it's not until Pidge is nearly a mile off down a hill climbing to massive piles of rubble that she realized she had left her helmet where she was sitting. It was far too late to go back to it. She was nearly to the silo and the rain was still coming. If she wasn't fast enough the kid was going to die, so she vowed to be more careful and to grab it when she got back out. Her teammates would be unhappy that she'd be unreachable through their comms, but she'd try to be fast and they would just have to wait._

 

_She realized with a nervous sort of energy that the silo was very close the flooding river. The waters below were churning dangerously and threatened to eat anything that came close to their depths. She kept track of the mud as it increased on the side of the silo at a dangerous pace. They were going to be in trouble soon. She needed to find a way inside, and briefly thought about just jetpacking her way to the top when she also remembered she had removed that too._

 

_Shiro was going to be so pissed if he found out._

 

_Pidge vowed to make sure he never found out._

 

_Eventually she found what seemed to be a weak spot in the metal around the base, and she took her bayard and hacked at it until it was big enough for her to squeeze through._

 

_Very little light was managing to come in from the top of the silo and it made the inside of it dim and nearly impossible to see in. Pidge used her shoulder lights to illuminate the space and finally get her bearings._

 

_Thankfully the silo was not full of crops, though it was slowly filling with mud. At first, Pidge didn't see any sign of a child, but she finally spied a young Keloian sunken against the wall on the far side. When the kid caught sight of her, she let out a desperate cry for help. The kid knew she was in trouble. When Pidge finally made it over to her, she realized their predicament._

 

_The young Keloian was buried to her waist in mud and had nothing to latch onto to pull herself free. Pidge had no idea how old the girl was because Coran had mentioned that the Keloian's had much longer lifespans than the humans, but the girl just looked like a terrified kid, so Pidge figured she could treat her as such._

 

“ _Hey. It's going to be okay. I'm going to get you out of here. Trust me.” Pidge looked around at some of the scrap pieces of metal inside the silo as she tried to think of a game plan. She could get stuck in the mud also, because then they would both need a rescue and that would defeat the purpose of the whole damn thing. “You can call me Pidge. What's your name?” She wanted to keep the kid talking to make sure she was okay while Pidge ran around to find something to free her with._

 

“ _I am Olia.” The girl's' voice was small and sounded around six to Pidge. She snatched up a few pieces of metal and started laying them out to spread out her weight._

 

“ _Nice to meet you Olia. I would like to say that you must have one set of lungs because my buddy heard you from a pretty long way away. Do you like to yell?”_

 

_The girl made a sort of strangled laugh. Pidge knew well that the children on Keloian were very well behaved and often quiet and reserved. Yelling was for playing and any other time they were to be soft spoken._

 

“ _Yes.”_

 

“ _I can tell, because you are very good. I bet you bet all your friends at yelling contests.”_

 

_This time Oila's laugh was real despite her precarious and dangerous situation. Pidge had managed to through together something that Olia could hold onto while Pidge tugged her free, and was about the toss it to her when she heard the entire silo give a monumental groan. It echoed around the pair with such volume that Olia threw her hands over her ears and cried out while Pidge lunged forward to get to the girl. The silo tilted perilously and Pidge toppled over in the opposite direction of the girl. The noise suddenly became deafening and there was too much movement before Pidge realized they had been caught by the mudslide._

 

_Rubble from higher on the hill came bashing into the silo at forty miles an hour and crushed the interior as the whole thing was sent into the river where it was caught on the bank. Pidge suspects that she was screaming before something came into contact with her head and she knew no more._

… _............................................................_

 

Shiro entered the common room to find one paladin, and ended up stumbling across them all. Lance and Hunk had buried Pidge in blankets and Keith had joined them at some point, but now they were all fast asleep curled up under the hologram's lights.

 

Accidentally, he also found Allura. She emerged from behind the couch were she was in the action of putting a blanket on Hunk's feet which were bare. Shiro felt gratefulness pull at his chest.

 

Eventually after she had deemed that they were all satisfactorily covered, she wandered over to where he stood in the doorway. She shrugged at his look.

 

“I ask a lot from them, and while they are handling it well, I know they are suffering.” She whispered as to not wake them, and Shiro smiled softly down at her.

 

“I suspect this will be a more common sight. They don't seem very comfortable being away from each other.” Shiro mumbled as they turned back to the pile of paladins.

 

“It's the bond. The previous paladins used to do it too, though they were much older and often more reserved about it. But they are just kids. I'm not surprised that they have very few boundaries.” Shiro watched as Lance stretched in his sleep, his long arm reaching out and gently punching Keith in the face. The others didn't stir at the movement however.

 

“We're going to be alright.” Allura whispered next to him, but he suspected it was more directed at herself than it was towards him. They had been working on an updated log of the human body so they could have a base to get started with Pidge's leg while the others went down to the hangar and Keith showered. Shiro knew that Allura was going to dig up something Pidge could use to get around on, and Shiro knew it was necessary, even if he suspected Pidge would probably abhor it. He knew how independent Pidge tended to be, and while the paladins were content with each other for now, eventually Pidge and the others were going to want to go off and be alone, and Pidge was going to need a way to get around.

 

He was just about to voice his concerns to Allura when the pile of bodies suddenly shifted as they all jolted awake with a terrified gasp. It made Shiro jump before he ran over to them. Each of the paladins were gray faced and fighting the blankets in a panic, but what was so unusual was the way they were all acting nearly simultaneously. Pidge was the most freaked, and her small chest jumped up and down with panicked chokes. After a moment of confused flailing, everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion.

 

They had all shared Pidge's dream.

 

They were so tightly packed together under the blankets on the couch that they had all been physically touching her, and that connection had led them all to experience the same dream. Keith was the first to recover, and he reached forward and clamped a hand on Pidge's arm. She was paler than normal, and her eyes held a terrified gleam that led Shiro to believe that maybe she wasn't fully awake. “Pidge- hey. It's over. You're okay.” He shook her a bit in an attempt to get her attention.

 

Lance and Hunk seemed to have fully processed what they had seen, and Shiro had never seen either of their eyes look so scared. Pidge finally nodded to Keith, but she wasn't looking anywhere but her lap. She didn't protest when Keith helped pull her up from her lounging position so she could better orient herself with the world. Allura had finally joined them after her initial shock and she knelt down next to Hunk.

 

“What was it? What did you see?” She reached forward gently and placed her cool hand on Lance's knee to ground him.

 

When he spoke, he spoke softly and leaned away from Pidge, who was obviously trying very hard _not_ to think about what they had dreamed and didn't need to hear what he was going to tell.

 

“A Keloian, a girl. She was young- and she was... very, very dead.” Lance's voice shuttered as he closed his eyes and turned away from her, the image of what he had seen overwhelming him. She turned to Hunk who looked to be on the verge of throwing up.

 

Allura knew none of her paladins were very squeamish when it came to blood. They had all been present to help when Pidge's wound was still fresh and very traumatizing, but all of them had managed to still function and be helpful. From how disturbed they all seemed, Allura had to assume what Pidge had dreamed was thoroughly terrifying.

 

“Her nae was Olia.” Keith almost missed Pidge's soft words.

 

“Olia?” He asked, wanting to prompt her into waking up a bit more.

 

She realized she had everyone's attention and swallowed thickly. “I went in to get her out, but... well. You know.” She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead harshly. “She got caught under the rubble.”

 

She shook her head violently.

 

She had failed that girl.

 

Shiro reached forward and used his hand to push back Pidge's bangs. He knew that no words were going to fix a situation that could only be mended by time, but he could help her move on, after all, he had experienced the feeling of failing as a protector many, many times.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review!


	4. Amenity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge needs to prove a few things to herself. Allura is there to make sure she doesn't drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this chapter is as fun to read as it was to write, because if so then it should be enjoyable. Things are a little slow in this chapter but will be swiftly picking up in the next one, so be on the look out for that. Other than that, all is normal!

Eventually Coran entered the common room to fetch Pidge and Shiro, and the uncomfortable hovering over her after her nightmare ended. She knew she would have to give the boys an explanation about what they had seen in her dream, but she was definitely not ready to face that beast yet.  
  


She wasn’t ready to talk about how she had failed Olia, or how her own carelessness had cost a life and had probably inconvenienced her team and an entire planet of people.  
  


She knew it was ridiculous to think such awful thoughts. She knew that her team did not see what had happened to her in the same shameful light she did. They saw it as a horrifying accident that she had been forced to handle alone, but Pidge saw it for what it really was: one massive fucking mistake. Had she not forgotten her armor, she may have been able to reach Olia at a different angle and rescued her before the mudslide collapsed the riverbank. Had she just fucking picked up her helmet, even if she had been trapped under that rubble, she would have been fine under water and have had a way to contact her team for rescue. She wouldn’t have lost her leg, and Olia might be alive.  
  


She had to squeeze her eyes shut at the thought, effectively blocking out the sight of Coran whipping up a meal for her in the castle's large kitchen. Just following that trail of thought made her stomach twist uncomfortably, and the prospect of food was quickly becoming nauseating.  
  


Coran had done a fabulous job of making food that was easy for her to eat and keep down, seeing as he knew she probably had lost a lot of her appetite during her time in the pod and all the adjusting her body was trying to get used to. So he made gooey meals that were pretty bland but fast to eat, but most importantly: They were packed with nutrients that her body was lacking from her time in partial stasis.  
  


Shiro noticed her sudden paleness and leaned forward on the counter where he could get a better look at her face. “Pidge? Are you alright?” She was still for a moment before she nodded then opened her eyes. She was avoiding eye contact with him in favor of staring off into space. Her eyes looked empty as she seemed to curl in on herself, and it looked as though she was trying very hard not to show any emotion on her face.  
  


Shiro’s chest ached at his lack of options to help her. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to take away the pain she was feeling, and he also knew that he wasn’t going to be able to even help ease some of that pain until she opened up a little more. He didn’t try to press her now though. They were hoping to get more nourishment into her so she could sleep some more and get the rest her body needed. She needed a distraction more than she needed him pressuring her about the things she had experienced. She just wasn’t ready yet.  
  


So instead, he went for the route he knew he had.  
  


“How was Green when you went to see her?” His suddenness of the question seemed to snap her out of her trance somewhat, and she sputtered out an answer in surprise.  
  


“She knew I was awake. When I sat down she started talking to me- but not like normal. She was using speech. Like words.” Pidge’s attitude slowly changed as she talked about her newly found relationship with her lion, and she straightened up so she could look at him.   
  


“I didn’t know they could do that. None of the other lions have done that yet. That’s amazing!”  
  


Coran came over with his finished food and set out a plate for her. It was only midafternoon, so while Pidge preferred to eat dinner with the rest of the paladins, she suspected she was going to need a nap very, very soon. She didn’t mind eating without them so long as Coran and Shiro kept her company.  
  


“Oh yes!” Coran exclaimed, having been listening to their exchange. “The previous paladins used to have all kinds of stories from their lions. They would speak and share memories through dreams, as though they were living it. It kept the bond between paladin and lion very personal and firm. It was always magnificent to see how close they could bond- even if it was funny watching the pilots wander around speaking to themselves sometimes.” He dished out a large serving for her and set down two water pouches.  
  


“Thanks,” Pidge said quickly. “All of the paladins spoke to their lions?” She was curious as to how the bond worked. Allura had said that the paladins and lions shared the same life force and quintessence, which still amazed Pidge when she thought about it. She knew she was growing closer to Green, but she also seemed to be growing closer to the other paladins too if they had shared the same dream as her from simply touching her.  
  


“Yes! I’m sure all of the others will soon be able to talk to their lions too, at different rates depending on what situations they find themselves in. You will be the leader in teaching them how to communicate.” Coran grinned as he sat down at the counter across from them both.  
  


Shiro spoke up again. “What did you and Green talk about?” he asked curiously. He wasn’t jealous of the relationship Pidge had earned, but he was certainly excited about being able to speak with Black in his own tongue. They all spoke to their lions, but they had never heard them speak back.  
  


“She said she tried to break down the hangar door and then that I should go rest.” Pidge smiled distantly as she started probing at her meal with a Spork.  
  


**You speak of me.**   
  


Pidge jumped in her seat at the new voice in her head. Green wasn’t louder than the volume that the others spoke at, but she had not been expecting her input to the conversation. “And just now. She scared me.” Pidge laughed breathlessly, one hand placed over her heart. Shiro’s smile was wide.  
  


“That’s exciting Pidge. Of course you were the one to discover that new feature of our bond. You’re always coming up with the new exciting things.” Pidge felt a proud blush rise to her cheeks as she started eating. The food was bland but that was okay, Pidge wanted to eat it fast so she could go back to bed. The bright lights of the castle were making her head start to ache behind her eyeballs, and she suspected the lack of food and blood was to blame at her condition. Normally she would never be affected by something so mundane.  
  


Shiro and Coran held comfortable conversation about a little bit of everything while she ate, an easy dialogue to listen to so she didn’t have to think too much.  
  


Until she realized that she had a question that she dreaded the answer to, but that she also really needed to know.  
  


“What happened to the Keloians? I mean, you guys all took me back up to the castle. How’d they finish evacuating?”  
  


Shiro’s eyes seemed to light up. This was one worry he could ease from her mind. “We called in support ships from the Lippoes, who had already been on their way, and had yet to contact us. When we noticed they were in the system we called them up and they were happy to land and help where we had to stop. They said they would update us on the situation later tonight, so we’ll know how they’re doing. We had already managed to clear out nearly all of the Keloians when we were forced to stop, so there wasn’t much to do except scan back through and do secondary search and rescues.”  
  


Pidge nodded at the news after a moment.  
  


That was a very good thing to hear.  
  


At least she hadn’t been the downfall of the rest of the planet’s people.  
………………………………………………….  
Hunk plopped down on the ground with a thwump. Sparring against Keith always left him breathless and achy. Keith was one of their ferocious combatant the team had, but Hunk genially enjoying battling against him. He always gave 100% and often Hunk got the opportunity to prove to himself that he was a better fighter than he thought. When he had first battled off with Keith, he had his ass handed to him almost immediately, but now nearly a year later- he could hold his own fairly well. Especially when they had to put down their bayards and practice hand to hand. Hunk was nowhere near as fast as Keith, but he was their solidest team member and he knew that how to deflect blows and stand his ground.  
  


But as much as he enjoyed sparring with Keith, he liked watching Keith and Lance sparring better.  
They were almost completely matched in the weight and strength departments, and they had the same body type except for Lance’s height, which didn’t give him much of an advantage. Despite these similarities, they had complete opposite fighting styles.  
  


Keith was an expert in short hand combat. His bayard was long and deadly but he was still very close to any opponent he had to face off against. Without his bayard, Keith focused on short jabbing and cutthroat attacks that debilitated his enemy.  
  


Lance on the other hand was designed for long distant attack. His bayard was closer to a sniper rifle than it was a machine gun like Hunk’s, and he was focused on making very precise assaults. So while he wasn’t as comfortable in short distance combat like Keith was, Lance always refused to be shown up or beaten by Keith. He had asked Allura to show him some good hand to hand strategies early on in their space journey, simply so Lance could get at Keith while they sparred. Lance focused less on jabbing, and more on throwing. He would hold a defense until he saw his opening to go low and throw his opponent to the ground where he could take up a dominate position. His height helped with his momentum, but made overhead throws much more difficult.  
  


Their two combined fighting styles and passionate rivalry meant that they always put on a good show in the ring.  
  


Hunk watched them battle it out with fierce aggression while he sipped on his water pouch. After waking up from their shared nightmare, none of the boys had felt like sitting inactive on the couch to brew in their own thoughts, so they had suited up and started training instead.  
  


Hunk would rather tinker with some of the castle’s mechanics, but his current project required Pidge’s insight, and he knew how badly she needed rest. Battle was the next best option seeing as how Coran had the kitchen occupied.  
  
Keith and Lance were breathing hard and their moves were slowly becoming sloppier. They had been on the mat for nearly twenty minutes, which was a ridiculously long time to be sparring. Most of the paladin's fights lasted roughly four minutes, not much longer than a standard UFC fight. Twenty minutes meant they weren't really trying to better their strategies or improve their skill, it meant they were just being stubborn and wanted to wear themselves out until they were too tired to think.

 

Eventually they were just wrestling around on the ground, trying to pin each other down. That's when Hunk finally stepped in and split them up.

 

The three of them collapsed in the middle of the floor and splayed out until they felt their joints pop. Hunk passed out water and they lapsed into a comfortable silence for awhile.

 

Finally- “Are we just going to ignore what we dreamt?”

 

“That was the plan, yeah.” Keith mumbled around his straw.

 

“No. We should talk about it.” Hunk sat up on his elbows.

 

Keith sighed moodily but sat up anyway. “She said the Keloian's name was Olia.”

 

“Olia. She seemed... young. Like a kid.” Lance mumbled, eyes screwing shut. He really didn't want to remember, but the images kept playing in the back of his mind and nothing he did were getting them to settle down. Maybe if they all talked about it and got it all out into the air then he wouldn't keep thinking about that girl.

 

He was suffering from just seeing the image in a dream. Pidge was down in that silo with the body for who knows how long. He couldn't even begin to understand what was probably going through her mind after living through something like that.

 

“Pidge must have been down there with her for hours. I don't think Olia died instantly.” Keith murmured, eyes staring unseeingly at the ceiling. “I know it looked bad, but she was probably still alive.”

 

_The Keloian girl was laying trapped under three massive sections of building and what looked to be a roof that had been torn off a house. Her legs had been trapped underneath her in the mud but now she was pinned completely to the earth, her head was half smashed and one of her eye sockets was filling up with blood. The blood was slipping from her nose as well and had saturated a large part of the ground. Pidge watched in speechless horror as the girl's mouth warped silently._

 

_She started forward instantly, lunging as far as she could just to reach the kid. Realistically she knew she wasn't going to be able to lift the rubble off of her body- but maybe if she could just get to her-_

 

_Pidge crashed back into the mud with an unfiltered shriek of pain. Something was wrong, she couldn't move-_

 

_She glanced away from the Keloian girl and down at her own body, where she realized she too had been caught in the debris the mudslide had carried. Her leg was completely pinned under a massive section of what looked to be a concrete portion of some structure. The slab of rock had her utterly crushed. It was bleeding sluggishly and disappeared under a space that was much too small for a leg to fit in._

 

_She could feel no trace of her foot._

 

_The sight alone made the rushing of the water instantly seem too loud, and the dim light that was filtering in from the top of the silo was enough to make her nauseous. She ducked her head but happened to catch sight of Olia's gasping body once more, and suddenly she was choking up hot bile and sputtering into the dirt. Every contraction of her stomach sent an agonizing pain from her leg up her spine. Her entire back felt like it was on fire._

 

Hunk gave a full body shutter. Pidge had probably been forced to watch while that girl either bleed out or drowned.

 

“Pidge seemed okay though... When we were with her earlier. She seemed tired, but she was in decent spirits.” Lance picked up quickly. He knew what Hunk was thinking about. It was the only thing that he had been thinking about since they woke up.

 

“Yeah but Pidge is always like that.” Keith sat up fully and dropped his pouch to the ground. “Once we were sparing and I twisted her wrist by accident, but I didn't know until that night because she kept fighting and then didn't bother to tell anyone. She's just reclusive.”

 

“She's not always like that though!” Lance objected. “She was always pretty open about her frustrations at the Garrison. And if she was in deep shit, she would ask us for help. Maybe she just hasn't processed it all. Or maybe she's just trying to not remember.” Lance shrugged.

 

“I know I would just try to forget.” Hunk answered. “Maybe she's just trying to push on and get on with things like she always does. She's never been the type to dwell on what she could have done. She's always been the type to just throw herself forward and try to fix it. Like with her family. She hacked into the Garrison really quickly after her family went missing. She didn't dwell on it- she just did what she knew she could do. Or when Allura got taken- she didn't sit there and wonder what she could have done differently, she just shot forward and wanted to get a plan started. Maybe that's how she copes.”

 

Hunk's words left the other two boys stewing in silence. Everything he had said made sense. He was right. Pidge didn't tend to boil in what could have been. She was a problem solver.

 

Lance nodded, his voice now full of determination. “Then let's help her move forward any way we can. And if she wants to go back- then we'll help her with that too.”

…....................................

 

Pidge wakes up the next morning in utter confusion. She didn’t totally remember falling asleep, and she wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she had last been awake. The lights in her room were on in accordance with the day cycle, so she hoped it was still morning. She reached for her tablet blearily; It read that it was about seven AM on Earth.

 

Allura and Coran had been gracious in accepting the paladins into the castle all those months ago, and they had been determined to set the clocks on a cycle that the humans were used to, even though the Altean clocks worked on a similar system with an extra four hours. Pidge could remember her fascination with the concept of having an extra four hours in the day to get things done. Alas, she had also enjoyed the gesture and the fact that she wasn’t going to have to familiarize herself with an entirely new clock on top of everything else the paladins were all trying to get used to.

 

She dropped the tablet onto the sheets and slowly curled her knees into her chest. It was awkward to wrap her arms around herself when she was missing a leg. It was as if she had too much room to wrap her arms around. It was always a strange sensation to realize it wasn’t there, because if she didn’t focus on it specifically she would forget. She hadn’t been doing anything but laying around, and she didn’t notice the missing weight then. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it.

 

A part of her just felt fucking stupid. She was the smartest member on their team and she had forgotten her helmet, and nearly died because of that simple mistake. It was such a small factor, but it had changed her life forever.

 

She also suspected she was supposed to be mourning the loss of a part of herself, but she wasn’t feeling all that sorrowful about it. Angry and bitter because of her mistake, yes, but heartbroken, no. It had been a surprise to her the other night when she had wept about it, a surprise full of uncertainty and fear, but not sadness. It was fucking unfortunate, but so were a lot of things in her life. And when Shiro had reassured her that they were going to make a leg for her to stand on and fight with- most of that toxic uncertainty had washed away. She still didn’t know how long she would be stuck without a leg, but she knew that it wouldn’t be forever, and she was a very adaptable person.

 

She was also a little concerned about how the others might start treating her. They had always been a little more protective of her on the battle field, but if they got even more protective of her then she would most certainly lose her mind. She wasn’t heartless; she knew they had seen her on death’s door and were probably reacting based on that experience, but she also knew that she could handle herself and did not need a babysitter during combat or for someone to try to cushion her during the war they were fighting. She didn't want her team thinking she had lost all of her strength. If they tried to keep her out of trouble then they would be in danger themselves, and that thought was too much to bear. She could not be the reason any of them got hurt. Never again.

 

Hell, she was already getting fired up just thinking about it. A lively fire sputtered down her bones and made her itch to get up and get moving. Maybe shower and work or something.

 

She stretched out and took note of how she was feeling. She was no longer completely overcome by the sleepy sensation that had been debilitating her yesterday, but her stomach was twisting uncomfortably and a piercing pain was trying to stab through the top of her head. It wasn't anything worse than what she experienced when she overworked herself though, so she decided not to let it bother her.

 

She vaguely wondered what had happened the day previously to make her forget going to sleep.

 

**You were nodding off at the table. Shiro carried you back to your room. He needed to speak to the leader of the Lippoes, but he would not leave until I instructed Black to tell him that I would watch over you.**

 

She blinked once on the mattress before nodding. That made sense. She didn’t remember it, but that made sense. “I’m sure he wasn’t easy to convince.”

 

**He was not. He is very worried.**

 

Pidge’s chest burned slightly at the thought. She had been letting the other paladins dote on her the day before because she had been exhausted and unwell, but maybe it was time to start perking up. She didn’t feel great, but her leg was completely healed and should they be in trouble, she was going to need to be able to assist her team. She didn't want to weigh them down.

 

Pidge sat up in bed and leaned forward some, resting her head in her hand as she was overcome with nausea. Coran mentioned there would be some side effects to all the blood she had lost and the accelerated healing that her body wasn’t used to. She had mostly been listening, but now that she thought back to their conversation, she couldn’t remember all the aftereffects he was talking about.

 

She vaguely wondered if short term memory loss had been one of them.

 

Eventually her stomach calmed some and she swung her stump over the side of the bed, and came to a fairly sudden realization.

 

She did not have a way to get around. She had her tablet which had been purposefully set by her bed in reach, so she figured the others were just counting on her calling them when she woke up.

 

She also knew that the others were waiting to get a wheelchair she could use to get around in. They weren't pushing the issue on her, but it was bound to come up when she finally had enough of their company and wanted to do things alone again. It was just a part of the change that she was going to have to get used to in the next weeks.

 

They didn't know however that she was going to turn down their wheelchair and go for crutches instead. She was still weak, but she wasn't okay with being condemned to a wheelchair. She wanted to work on getting strong again and if she was honest, she was holding onto a thin thread of her pride. She knew there was nothing wrong with wheelchairs, and that the people who used them were most certainly not weak, but she also couldn't bring herself to be okay with using one.

 

She wanted crutches.

 

She also knew that the others would argue against them. She wasn't realistically strong enough to get around on them for any long period of time, but she also didn't care.

 

So instead of using her tablet to call anyone from her team, she decided that she would shower on her own and then face them with her argument for the crutches.

 

Thankfully the paladin's rooms in the castle had attached bathrooms, and she knew that no matter how stupid she looked getting the job done, no one would be around to see her.

 

Surprisingly, hopping around was nearly impossible. She could remember being a kid and being fantastic at hopping around on one foot, but when the other leg was missing completely, the counter weight was also missing, and keeping balanced was incredibly difficult. So she crawled, and she made stupid jokes in her head to keep her thoughts form taking a darker turn at her new struggle. It felt primitive and made a lot of things feel fairly hopeless, but she refused to dwell on that. She was going to be fine damn it.

 

And, if she thought about it, she probably looked pretty fucking funny. Fuck pathetic thoughts. Fuck pity. She was just doing what she needed to do to prove to herself that she was still perfectly independent. She was just getting the job done.

 

She snorted as she reached the threshold of the bathroom.

 

“Look Marianne! I'm a sloth... See how slowly I move...”

 

**This does not feel very responsible.**

 

“I've never been the responsible one. That's Hunk's job.” Pidge commented absently as she continued her journey.

 

**It is okay to ask for help, paladin.**

 

“I know, but I don't wanna bother them. Plus, if I know I can do this, then I'll be better off.” Pidge could feel her lion rumble unhappily in the back of her mind but brushed her off. She had to prove that she could do this for herself.

 

Eventually she closed the door behind her and stripped off all her clothes while sitting on the floor. She tossed them into the corner to be dealt with later. She wondered if she really needed to look at herself in the mirror before she got in the shower, decided she did not, and used the toilet instead. She had to use the edge of the massive tub to hoist herself up, but she had managed. She vowed that one day when she had the time, she was going to take the most epic bath in the history of baths in it. It was so big that it reminded her of a hot tub more than a bathtub, and Allura had given her some amazing smelling concoctions to put in it as a gift when Pidge had fixed a bug in Allura's room that kept it from warming up properly.

 

Eventually she made it into the shower stall and hit the panel buttons that would start up a warm spray. The castle had about a million different settings for the showers, and the paladins' first week in space had been full of ridiculous stories of how they had hit random buttons labeled in Altean and hoped for the best. Hunk had been blasted with a sort of shaving cream and had used it as soap, Shiro had activated a feature that filled the stall full to the top with water, and Keith had accidentally dispensed over twenty different smelling soaps at once. Their stories had been legendary and utter hilarious to Allura and Coran, who had had mercy on them and showed them the most basic of setting for the paladins to make use of.

 

Pidge had experimented with it a bit, and today she decided she wanted her water hot and fierce to beat out all the aches in her muscles that had came with sleeping so much. She sat on the floor of the shower and closed the door, positioning herself so she was hit by the spray.

 

The bathroom quickly filled with steam as she rested against the shower wall and let the water batter her with a vengeance. The heat in the room was wonderful and she took a moment to push all of her sopping hair out of her face and press it back against her skull. She was slow to wash and didn't bother to look at what kind of soap she was dispensing. She got lucky with some kind of blue goop that smelled like cherries and used it to wash her hair and body both. She was already starting to feel a little drained, if she were honest. Her previous oath to get up and be productive today was already starting to sound completely exhausting. Frustration swelled in her throat but she pushed it down and leaned back against the wall once more.

 

It was going to take time to get strong again, and while she swore that she wasn't going to be beaten down by losing her leg, she wasn't exactly looking forward to building up her physical strength again. Her time in Garrison had been rigorous while the professors and athletic trainers pushed them to be fit enough to withstand space travel. They had woken early and trained for hours upon hours until the supervisors were sure they weren't sending any kids into space that would pass out immediately and become a risk factor to their fellow cadets. Pidge had fought tooth and nail to not stand out like a sore thumb among the other kids.

 

She was younger than the other cadets by three years at the least, and she had never been a particularly athletic girl. She was fast and agile, but she would rather stay inside and teach herself coding rather than join the track team. That lack of experience had meant that getting to a point where she wasn't falling behind in the physical realm of the Garrison's training had complete misery.

 

But damnnit if she hadn't dominated. She had flown under everyone's radar just like she had planned.

 

The heat of the shower was starting to effect her some. She guessed that the last time she had drank water had been the previous day when she ate, and now her tongue felt like leather if she were honest. The heat wasn't doing any good, and she figured she better get water once she caught out. She could turn the heat down, but the panel was kind of high if she were honest, and she didn't have the energy to get up.

 

Oh.

 

She didn't have the energy to get up.

 

She had not thought this through.

 

Perhaps if she sat and rested, she would feel good enough to turn off the water and drag her stupid ass out of the shower. Someone would be in to check on her soon enough, and she didn't want anyone coming in to find her crawling around on the floor naked, so she would only have so long before she needed to be done.

 

She hadn't planned on her stomach revolting from the heat too.

 

Ten minutes later found her heaving the food goo from yesterday down the shower drain, and she realized pretty quickly that she wasn't going to be able to get herself out. She made sure she didn't have any vomit or soap on her and weakly moved out of the way of the spray. She couldn't reach high enough on her knee to turn it off, and she wasn't going to be strong enough to get out of the shower.

 

**I am going to contact the Princess.**

 

Pidge wanted to argue with Green, but she knew she couldn't. She was in quite the predicament. She was going to need help, and she would rather it be from the princess than the boys. The other paladins would not make her embarrassed or uncomfortable, but she didn't really want them to see her looking so pathetic. They needed to know they could count on her as a teammate, and if they saw her, she knew their view of her would change, no matter how hard they tried not to let it affect them.

 

Plus if the Princess came, then Pidge could finally thank her for saving her life.

 

**She is coming.**

 

Pidge nodded and pushed all her hair back out of her face again.

 

Maybe the Princess would save her the lecture until she felt better.

 

She certainly hoped so.

 

…...................................................

 

Allura arrived to the Green paladin's quarters a few panicked minutes later, and she realized that seeing flashes of Pidge on the bathroom floor had scared her far more than she had thought originally. She had seen visions sent by the lions before, but it always startled her, and seeing Pidge so vulnerable and alone had sent her sprinting through the castle's halls.

 

She started right up to the bathroom door and nearly went directly inside before she figured she should probably knock.

 

“Pidge! Its me, Allura. I'm coming in okay?” The door slid open at her command and she was slapped in the face with a wall of heat. The steam inside the bathroom was so thick that she actually struggled to realize what she was looking at at first. Then she spotted Pidge huddled in the corner of the shower, leaning away from the heavy spray of hot water with her eyes closed.

 

Allura snatched up a towel from the shelf quickly and threw open the stall door. She turned off the water immediately and knelt down on the wet shower floor next to her youngest paladin. “Pidge. Can you hear me?” She reached forward and gripped her wet shoulder and gave her a shake, ignoring the girl's nakedness. Alteans were a generally conservative people, but they were rarely embarrassed about the body. It was just never a big deal.

 

Pidge opened her eyes at the touch and gave her a smile that looked more like a grimace. “Sorry.” She whispered, her voice hoarse from having vomited. She closed her eyes again in exhaustion and Allura made a soft noise of despair. It was always awful to see any of her paladins in bad shape, but Pidge was so much younger than the others that it really got under her skin.

 

“It's okay. Don't be sorry. We can talk about it later.” She took the thick towel and wrapped it around Pidge's thin shoulders. Because of its size, it practically drowned her in fabric. Like everything else on the castle, it was made for Alteans. “I'm going to pick you up so we can go to the other room where it's dry.” When Pidge nodded Allura scooped her up easily and realized that she didn't mind when Pidge's thick wet hair left drenched spots on her dress. She wondered uncertainly what that meant.

 

Finding clean clothes for Pidge in the messy piles of clothing that layered the bedroom floor proved to be more difficult than Allura had predicted. Eventually she found a pair of warm pants and a thick sweater that Allura had lent Pidge when the paladins had first moved into the castle. They smelled clean enough and considering how much Pidge sweat, worn clothes tended to stink.

 

Pidge was a little more conscious once she was introduced to the cold, and only needed Allura's help with maneuvering her limbs through the holes in the clothes, but she managed everything else on her own. She laid back on the bed limply while Allura tied a careful knot with the extra fabric from her stump, preventing it from hanging loosely.

 

“So it won't let in cold air.” The princess explained as she finished up. When Pidge held her arms straight up into the air unceremoniously and showed Allura that her hands were drowning in the extra length of fabric designed for someone twice her size, Allura actually snorted. She leaned forward and began rolling back the extra cloth while she spoke. “Green gave me a fright earlier. I was not expecting her to contact me.”

 

“Hm.” Pidge didn't have much to say to that. Green had a way of startling her as well.

 

“I was hoping that _you_ would be the one to contact me when you were awake. Through the castle, like a sensible person.” Allura's voice was still light, and showed none of the anger that Pidge had been preparing herself for. In fact, Allura seemed utterly calm, as though she wasn't surprised to find Pidge had tried to take a shower and hadn't been strong enough to pull herself out.

 

When Pidge really thought about it, Allura had most likely been predicting that she was going to do something stupid. She had been doing a lot of stupid things lately.

 

“That's Hunk's job.” Allura's smile also seemed genuine and surprisingly not forced. Pidge felt herself relaxing some.

 

“I'll have to tell him to get on you then.” She finished rolling up Pidge's sleeves and grabbed the towel to get to work on Pidge's hair. “I think this is an opportunity I may never get again.” Pidge's eyes snapped back up to the princess's face. Allura had a goofy grin on and had settled herself on the bed comfortably.

 

“What do you mean?” Pidge asked suspiciously.

 

“I could do whatever I want to your beautiful hair and you couldn't stop me.”

 

Pidge barked out a surprised laugh. It was true. Every muscle in her body had been reduced to jelly, and the prospect of so much as lifting up her leg or her stump seemed like way too much work. She wasn't going to be able to get up for awhile, forget doing anything productive or getting her crutches. She wasn't sure if she was going to manage leaving he room today. “You're right. I couldn't.”

 

The second part of Allura's sentence struck her. “You like my hair?”

 

Allura lifted her head and swept the towel beneath it, then gathered all of her wet hair into it and began to gently rub the water out. “Well, I know that you only brush it half of the time, so sometimes I like it twice as much, but yes, I like your hair.”

 

“I have never heard anyone say they like my hair. Not since I've cut it anyway.”

 

“Really? But there's so much of it. Of course it's beautiful.”

 

Pidge felt her heart swell some. “I used to take a lot of pride in my hair, and cutting it really sucked, but I knew it needed to be done.” She shrugged. “I actually like it like this though. It's a lot lighter and it's way easier to take care of. My head doesn't sweat as much and I get fewer headaches.”

 

“So do you think you'll leave it short or let it grow?”

 

“I'll probably just keep it short. I mean, I've cut it a few times on the castle. Sometimes I let it grow a little and it annoys me, especially the stuff in my face, so I cut it out of frustration. Plus, I don't want to imagine what it would be like getting long hair into my helmet. I don't know how you do it.”

 

Allura finished toweling off Pidge's hair. “I've had much more practice, and my mother also showed me a great style that fits in my suit.” She tossed the towel to the side and scooted back on the bed where she gently lifted Pidge's head into her lap.

 

“What're you doing?”

 

Allura began to gently weave her fingers into the thick clumps of hair. “I'm doing your hair.”

 

“I thought it was too short to do anything with.” Pidge murmured, eyes already drifting shut at the sensation of having her hair gently manipulated.

 

“Oh no. I have ideas.” Allura's smile was bright.

 

She knew that Pidge was suffering, and she appreciated the moment for what it was; a chance to ease her paladin's mind and provide some familiar comfort. She took her short hair and carefully wove it until delicate braids, then took them all out and started again. Pidge was asleep within minutes. Allura used one hand to grasp her current braid and the other to snag a near by blanket, and used it to cover up the younger girl's body.

 

There was something exceptionally pleasant about giving some comfort to someone in need. Allura had always known she had a nurturing side, but she had occasionally forgotten it in favor of being a leader, which was silly because she knew damn well that she could do both.

 

Especially to Pidge.

 

So she stayed on the bed and gently entwined her long fingers through her paladin's wet hair, and relished in the sensation of warmth that Pidge emitted; a reminder that her youngest warrior was alive and healing.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review!


	5. Afterlife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team transports Pidge to the castle. Allura appreciates her new bond to the Green paladin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YIKES so this is about a week late. I should warn you not to expect updates to hold much of a schedule now, but to expect them to come at intervals no more than two weeks apart. I've been struggling a lot at this point in time and last week was one of the worst weeks I have had in a long time. I love writing this story, but I couldn't bring myself to sit down and actually write it. I just had no motivation or energy. 
> 
> However i'm getting back into the swing of things so hopefully no more delays.
> 
> Also, this chapter is incredibly short. Like- half my usual length. I'm still going through some really hard times and I didn't want to postpone updating too much more than I already had. Things are going to pick up and hopefully the next chapter will be longer. Sorry.
> 
> Anyway- It's all good. Just know that I enjoy it but it's been difficult anyway. 
> 
> Also be warned that this chapter has more gore than the previous ones.

“ _Oh god Shiro-” Keith pushed Pidge's shoulders down deeper into the mud in an attempt to keep her lithe body from squirming away from Shiro's work. He assumed that Shiro was working as quickly as possible, but it felt as if Pidge had been screaming for years. Her voice had gone out almost completely, and he could tell that she was not fully conscious by how her eyes were struggling to not roll back into her head._

 

“ _I'm almost done, I'm almost done.” Shiro rushed, his words clipped and thick. Pidge gave a particularly violent jerk beneath him, and Keith felt bile lingering in the back of his throat. Her hands had latched onto his arms as soon as the cauterizing started, and while he couldn't feel much of anything in his arms anymore, he suspected that were it not for her flailing, she might have bruised his fucking bones._

 

“ _It's okay. It's almost over.” He wasn't fully aware that he was shouting over Pidge's cries, but the words wouldn't stop flowing out of his mouth. He couldn't do anything to make her feel better, but some irrational part of his brain had decided that if he sat back and did nothing he was going to lose his fucking mind._

 

_A few moments later and Shiro pulled his hand away. “Done. It's done. It's done.” Shiro was usually the most stoic of all the paladins, but now he wasn't even trying to hide the shaking in his voice or the trembling of his hands. He was breathing hard despite the fact that the action of sealing Pidge's stump was not strenuous work._

 

_Keith didn't dare to look down at what remained of Pidge's leg. He vaguely heard Lance and Hunk shouting through the paladin's comm line, but Shiro's orders for the two to converge and pick the rest of them up and transport them to the castle completely fly over his head. Instead, all of his attention had been captured by Pidge._

 

_She was still jerking._

 

“ _Shiro!” He knew what was happening, but he wasn't holding the processing capacity to focus on anything but the horrifying sight of her small body convulsing._

 

“ _Okay. She's seizing. Let go of her shoulders. Let go.” Shiro quickly skirted around Keith and knelt by Pidge's head where he cupped the back of her skull to prevent it from bashing into the ground. “It's okay. You were trained for this Keith. Back at the Garrison, I know you were. It looks bad, but it's just her body reacting. Pull up your timer. Time how long it goes on for.” Keith nodded after moment, glad to have been given a task that didn't involve holding down one of his teammates, even if it did make him feel a little useless._

 

_He found that despite his best efforts to not watch Pidge's misery, he ended up unable to take his eyes off of her. She was so fucking small. She was the youngest of all of the paladins, but also one of their fiercest. She had an incredible ability to simply keep going even when it had seemed as if all hope was lost. The fact that her family had disappeared on a moon that was incapable of supporting life hadn't been enough to discourage her from searching for answers only served to prove Keith's point. When Allura had been captured, Pidge's only focus was on a new plan, not on sulking. She refused to be knocked down. Hell, she refused to be slowed down even. Seeing her experience such an agony that she in no way deserved was like being kicked in the chest._

 

“ _How long?” Pidge was still seizing, but Shiro seemed more anxious than he had when it had started._

 

“ _Four minutes.” Keith relayed. Shiro's frown deepened. He could only guess that the seizure was induced by the bodily trauma, but it was bad news that it had already lasted so long. It seemed to be slowing some, but he knew that any non-harmful seizures were supposed to be around three, and even those could be dangerous._

 

_The familiar sound of Yellow approaching their location filled Keith's ears, and he glanced away from where Pidge lay in the mud to spot the lion landing twenty yards away. Lance was leaping out of the lion before she had completely opened her hatch, and he nearly fell flat on his face were it not for his jetpack._

 

“ _Okay- we need to move.” Keith turned back to Shiro and Pidge, who had finally stopped seizing. Her hair was completely plastered with mud and gunk from the ground, and the rain had formed puddles under her tiny body. When Shiro reached down he had to fight to get his arm beneath her shoulders due to the sticky mud, and adjusted his grip on her thighs so he would not tear open what he had just sealed shut. Shiro was one of the strongest members of their team, and he p_ _icked up Pidge like she weighed nothing at all. The mud released her with a wet SQUELCH as Shiro made it back to his feet, the limp Pidge cradled firmly against his chest. Her head fell back li_ _mply, and Shiro tired to nudge his shoulder beneath her head to support it. “Let's go. I'll explain our departure to the_ _Keloians later. Pidge comes first.” Shiro said no more than that, and Keith immediately knew that their current situation on the planet had been effectively shoved to the back burner until further notice._

 

_Shiro's face was ashen as he said the fact- he was never one to abandon anyone, but he had lost teammates before- and it was clear that anything that might have proved an obstacle in getting Pidge treated would be of no concern to him._

 

_Keith found a certain amount of respect in that._

 

_Before he knew what was really happening they had sprinted across the short distance to Yellow and where stumbling up her ramp._

 

_“Oh my fucking god-” Lance's voice rang out next to him, and Keith realized that they had also been unaware of the situation. “Oh my god-” Shiro had already entered the commands into one of the side screens inside of Yellow's cockpit, and watched as three seats were lowered from the metal paneling, complete with seatbelts._

 

_Hunk had remained in the cockpit while the others boarded, but now he had a full view of what was happening as Yellow's mouth closed. “What happened? Oh my god, ohmygod Pidge-” Lance had turned white and looked like he might slump to the ground in any second. Keith shoved him towards one of the empty seats next to Shiro and Pidge so he wouldn't fall and crack his head. Lance took one glance at his youngest friend and immediately turned his head away, overcome by the blood and gunk that was coating her, and most of all, the empty space where her leg was supposed to be._

 

_Keith collapsed in the seat next to him, his heart hammering against his chest as bile threatened to rise to his throat. He wanted to help Lance- to tell him that the worst of it was probably already over- but he didn't fucking know, and when he looked at her for too long he could swear that maybe her chest wasn't rising- but Shiro was watching too and he wasn't doing anything-_

 

_Keith realized they hadn't moved yet. “Hunk. The Castle. We don't have time.” Apparently his words were enough to snap him out of his trance, and Yellow suddenly lurched before shooting into the sky. The sudden movement jolted them all, and Pidge gasped awake, her eyes shooting open as her leg was bashed against Shiro's armor. Shiro cursed and held her a little farther from himself, eyes scanning her quickly. “You're okay- just hang on. We're almost to the castle.”_

 

_She was gasping for air in desperate wheezes, her eyes wild and afraid. It was obvious that she was not in a completely conscious state of mind._

 

_Lance had gone grey, but he leaned over Pidge's side and managed to make eye contact with her. “Hey. You gotta breathe. Slow down some, just suck in one deep breath- here-” She watched him before shaking her head violently at his words and pawing at Shiro's chest blindly. Lance had to reach out when she shoved away from Shiro as hard as she could, and barely kept her from crashing onto the ground. He understood what she had been trying to accomplish when a second later he felt her skinny back convulse and she threw up onto the ground. Keith leapt out of his seat to help Lance keep Pidge from falling to the ground. The spell lasted a few rounds, but Shiro mentioned it wasn't uncommon behavior after an intense seizure. By the time it was done, she was panting hard, trying to suck air into shaky lungs. They carefully tucked her back into Shiro's arms where she wheezed limply._

 

_Eventually her breathing slowed some. “Sor-ry, Hunk-” Her words were hoarse from the screaming, and Lance was impressed that she had the state of mind to speak at all._

 

_Hunk looked at her over his shoulder, confident that Yellow could deliver them to the castle without his steering. “Pidge- It's okay. Do you know how much vomit I've had to clean outta here? A lot. A little more is no biggie. Yellow's used to it” Hunk's voice cracked a few times while involuntary tears streamed drown his round cheeks, but he seemed determined to give her good news._

 

_Pidge snorted some before closing her eyes once more. Shiro didn't exactly want her falling asleep on them, but he couldn't quite bring himself to add to the uncertainty that was radiating off of her and the others._

 

_The castle came into view then and moments later they had already entered Yellow's hangar. Keith ahd already come to the conclusion that he, Shiro, and Lance would have to go back to the planet to retrieve their lions, but it wasn't his main concern._

 

_When the hatch dropped, Allura and Coran were already there waiting for them. Shiro exited first, his eyes trained on Pidge's slack face the entire time._

 

_“We were listening to the comms. The decontamination center and pod are ready.”_

 

_Damn- Keith hadn't even thought about that. They couldn't put Pidge into the pod while she was covered with so much muck. The pods could kill off most bacteria with their freezing temperatures, but most bacteria that could survive in the human body was designed to thrive in extreme surroundings, and would only infect whatever the pod tried to fix. They had been forced to put Shiro through the same process after he had spent so much time rolling in the dirt after his battle with Haggar._

 

_He didn't realize they were running to the med bay until Lance shoved him a little, no doubt as a returning favor for when Keith had reminded him to move only minutes ago. “Come on Keith, run!” And together they eventually caught up with the others._

 

_Apparently the med bay had it's own decontamination unit, similar to the one at the entrance of the ship that they had used before. This one however was made for one person to stand in. Keith was about to go in the lend a hand when Coran shooed him, Lance, and Hunk out. “I'm sorry boys- but there is not enough space. It will only take a moment.”_

 

_A moment without eyes on Pidge certainly seemed a moment too long, but none of them voiced that._

 

_“Here-” Allura came up next to Shiro and quickly unclipped the remaining pieces of Pidge's armor until she was only in the black undersuit. Shiro carefully passed the limp girl into Allura's arms who then climbed into the oversized shower, still fully clothed. “Hit the three green buttons and set them back to zero.” Allura instructed Shiro, who turned to the panel next to him and did as he was told. Coran appeared next to him a moment later and finished the process, and the shower came to life. Allura made quick work of unsticking the fabric of Pidge's suit that had become adhered to the burn of her leg. The liquid that showered them was designed for such a purpose._

 

_Shiro was watching, but he looked sick to the core, and a little like a soft wind would tip him over. Allura took her eyes from him and focused on her task instead. She was somewhat frightened by how little she knew of the human anatomy. Her paladins had been injured before, but it had not been at a severity that could not be healed by a few hours in the pod. She was experienced in the damage that came with war, but she did not know how much humans could take before they died- and that was a scary thing to be in the dark about. As she quickly freed Pidge from the black suit- removing a lot of the blood and mud with it- she took stock of the grey tint to the girl's body and the way her lips had gone blue._

 

_She was sure that was a bad sign._

 

_She made sure there was no foreign matter near the stump and decided it would have to be good enough before ordering Coran to turn off the shower and retrieved the healing suit from Shiro. Maneuvering Pidge's skinny limbs was too tricky to do efficiently however, and Shiro ended up assisting her. It was then that Shiro pressed two fingers to the girl's throat, an action that neither Allura or Coran had ever seen before. After a few seconds of hesitation, Shiro made a low terrified sound in his throat, pressing closer to Allura and Pidge, as though by simply being closer, he could will her heart to beat beneath his fingers.”Oh god-”_

 

_Allura took that as a sign that they were out of time. She shoved Shiro forward (with Pidge still cradled in his arms) and they threw open the door and reentered the main cyropod chamber where the other boys were still huddled. Coran went immediately to the center of the room where the main controls were while Allura picked the closest pod. Coran already had the horizontal command entered, and the pod laid itself sideways so that Allura could lay Pidge down. She did so and stepped back as quickly as possible so that it may close and begin its process._

 

_Everyone held their breaths while the pods closed... but didn't fill with mist. Lance and Keith both took one confused step forward before both the pod and the control center began to flash red._

 

_[NO VITAL SIGNS DETECTED]_

 

_[SIGNS OF LIFE NONDISCLOSED]_

 

_Coran made a noise in the back of his throat and began entering commands into the panel at lightening speed, but even once he finished, the same message showed on the screen._

 

_[NO VITAL SIGNS DETECTED]_

 

_[SIGNS OF LIFE NONDISCLOSED]_

 

_Hunk stepped forward, his eyes on the screen instantly while he tried to understand what the problem was. Thanks to Pidge's translation program, he wasn't uninformed for long. “She's dead.” His large hands found the hair at his scalp and dug in. “Dead-” Lance's mournful moan was cut off when he stumbled from the way his knees decided to no longer hold his weight._

 

_Pidge was dead._

 

_Shiro hadn't moved._

 

_They had no defibrillators- or syringes full of adrenaline- he and Coran had a conversation about such things months ago. The pod could mimic all of those things if it could detect enough life remaining to do so._

 

_There was nothing to be done._

 

_And yet by the way Allura was stumbling forward as though drunk, he wasn't so sure. The pod opened immediately at her touch, and she scooped Pidge back into her arms. The look on the princess's face was one Shiro had never seen before- She had thick tears dripping from her chin, but she looked more furious than she did mournful._

 

_Shiro didn't know what that meant._

 

_Allura pulled Pidge to her tightly before crashing to her knees where she deposited Pidge onto the metal ground, the both of them still leaking puddles from the decontamination. Coran seemed to know what was going through her mind when he lurched towards them, about to grab Allura by the shoulders to pull her back when she spoke._

 

_“Do not touch me.” Allura stripped off the gloves she had on with her usual combat suit, and placed both hands over Pidge's chest._

 

_Coran did not touch her, but the look on his face told the paladin's all they needed to know._

 

_“It could kill you.” The older man's words cracked, but still, he did not interfere._

 

_“If I could save the life of an entire Balmara, then I can certainly save Pidge.” Shiro had been wrong. The look on Allura's face had not been fury, but utter anguish._

 

_By the time the paladin's understood Allura's plans, the princess's hands had already begun to glow, filling the room with celestial light. It started at a soft glow of blue before it completely overpowered any other light source in the room and glowed with the capacity of a thousand suns. The Blue turned to Green, and for possibly hundredth time since meeting the princess, Shiro felt himself overcome by the ethereal powers of Allura._

 

_Just as quickly as it had begun, it had ended. Allura collapsed to the side to vomit and Pidge's small body convulsed with a series of wheezes that reverberated throughout the room. Coran was closest, and while every instinct he had acquired since becoming Allura's adviser screamed at him to go to her, he instead scooped up the trembling Pidge and laid her in the pod which closed automatically. One command on its glass-like surface had it starting the healing process immediately. It filled with mist and began reading out vital signs only seconds later. Shiro had already gone to the princess, helping to hold her up when she slumped over. Keith and Lance hesitated as Coran vacated the space around the pod to go back to Allura, but decided that while Allura was now spent, she was in good hands and wouldn't appreciate them gawking at her. Now with Hunk, they took up a silent guard in front of the pod that held their conscious teammate._

 

_“Come- we should get you cleaned up.” Coran kept his voice low. He was aware of the piercing headache that the regurgitation of the Balmara had given Allura last time, and he didn't wish to add to her ailments. She didn't protest when he and Shiro helped her to her feet, but did begin to complain when Shiro eventually picked her up bodily. The object went unnoticed as he and Coran traded words briefly, but she didn't catch what they were saying._

 

_She found that while she despised being carried like a child, she also did not have the energy to fight Shiro's hold. So instead she let herself get lost in the way the blood on her suit seemed to match that that was on his. Both from the same little girl..._

 

She wakes up with the same thought dancing around in her head, and the darkness of the room gives her pause for a moment when she doesn't immediately spy her young companion. The warmth curled around her stomach however looks suspiciously like the Green paladin. Allura reached down and rested a gentle hand upon Pidge's mop of wild hair with a smile.

 

She had not lost her. She was alive, and they were all going to be okay.

 

She felt the heavy sensation that came with sleeping for too long and fumbled blindly for where she hoped Pidge had left her tablet. Its clock read four AM, and Allura felt a strange sense of dread in her stomach. She disliked sleeping the day away. It always felt as though she was wasting time that she couldn't afford to lose. She went to bed late and woke up early, and had found that so long as she stuck to her schedule, she wouldn't be too drowsy. If she slept the entire day and most of the night, she must still be much weaker than she had thought. Perhaps Coran had been correct when he said she was still not well.

 

Pidge shifted some in her sleep, mumbling something about oak trees before her words turned back into complete gibberish. When the princess tucked the blankets more securely around them, her youngest paladin did not rise.

 

She and Pidge had not shared the same dream as the others had, but Allura suspected that was more because of Green's heightened presence in Pidge's mind rather than their lack of connection. Seeing as they technically shared the same quintessence now.

 

Perhaps the day had not been wasted after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review!


	6. Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge is tired of sitting around and jumps at the opportunity to get back in the playing field.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHoah did I write another chapter of this? Yeah. Who knew. I hope this helps make up for the absence. It's not very long but it is something that I feared I would never write. 
> 
> I have a lot more ideas of what I can do for this story now after that ridiculous hiatus, so expect more to come from this story in the future. If you have any questions feel free to ask!

It is another two days before Pidge is strong enough to receive her crutches. By the time she's somewhat mobile again, she is practically vibrating with pent up energy. She was never a stagnant soul, and inactivity always made her jittery and desperate for some kind of simulation. Back on Earth that meant stirring up trouble in her neighborhood or convincing Matt to entertain her. In the castle there were always things that needed to be taken care of, or research she could be doing. When she was restless but didn't want to be productive, she could always find a distraction with the castle's computer systems or by kicking Lance's ass in video games.

 

But, as she was now learning, she could only play video games for so long before losing her mind.

 

“Pidge, you sure you don't want a turn?” Hunk held his controller out to her, dark eyes searching her out. “I've played like five rounds.”

 

“Yeah Pidge, play a little would you? Its not fun beating Hunk after twenty minutes in.” Lance's threw himself backwards onto the couch, arms flopping down above his head and disrupting Keith where he was tapping away on one of the castle's tablets.

 

“Nah. You guys keep playing. I'll join next game.” She knew she had said that last time, but she was tired of doing nothing. She was ready to be productive again. The boys had been sweet in their attempts to keep her busy, but she was a busybody. She needed to feel useful again.

 

Unfortunately, it was nearly midnight, and they were supposed to be sleeping. Pidge was fairly certain that Coran and Allura were well aware that almost none of the paladins slept when they were supposed to, but no one had said anything to them. Pidge suspected she might have caused that shift in attitude. She couldn't blame either of them for not wanting to disrupt the fragile peace that the younger paladins had created among themselves.

 

And Shiro... Pidge wasn't sure what Shiro was up to. She had a sense that he was struggling a little more than he had been before her fuck up. He acted the same, but he seemed more exhausted than usual, and he gave them a lot more leeway when they goofed off.

 

She tried not to think too hard about how her losing her leg was affecting her teammates, because she hated any kind of notion that she had caused a negative ripple effect to cascade through their team, but she was slowly coming to terms with the fact that she had most definitely altered the dynamic of the castle when she got caught in that mudslide.

 

Shiro's odd behavior alone was proof enough. He had lost his team before, and he knew better than any of them just how fragile life was. He had experienced a level of morality that changes the way a person thinks forever- he knew how often he and the others often came to death- but Pidge suspected that when she lost her leg, he was reminded of that morality like someone might remember that they couldn't swim as soon as they fell into the sea. It was bound to happen eventually. They were reckless teenagers engaging in advanced warfare with a civilization hellbent on destroying the universe. They were going to be hurt. There were going to be casualties.

 

Pidge just wished that she hadn't been the first one to affect Shiro so.

 

“Has anyone talked to Shiro lately?” She spoke up, addressing her friends at large.

 

“He was training earlier with Allura.” Keith answered, his eyes never leaving the screen he was so absorbed in. “Why?”

 

Pidge shrugged. “I feel like he's been acting weird lately.”

 

“He has.” Lance confirmed, no longer lounging backwards on the couch, but rather leaning forward towards the hologram displaying the video game. “Can't blame him though.”

 

“What do you mean?” Pidge dug her elbows beneath her and pushed herself up, eyes barring into Lance.

 

Lance didn't notice. “He thought you were dead. For a moment he probably thought both you and Allura were dead. Scary shit affects people.”

 

Pidge's stomach sank. She _knew_ that, but it didn't make it any easier to hear. The last thing she wanted was to hurt Shiro. He had slowly been healing- not startling out of sleep so often, not flinching at every noise, not on constant alert,- if she had set him backwards in that...

 

“Don't worry too much Pidge.” Had Keith read her mind without even looking up? Just what the hell was he so invested in on that tablet? “I went to talk to him but Allura had already beat me to it. They didn't even notice me enter the arena. I figured I'd leave them to talk.”

 

Oh. Well. She'd talk to Allura later then, just to be sure.

 

She dropped back onto the couch with a soft thump, eyes wandering to the ceiling. “Alright then.”

 

The central room was quiet for a moment, only disrupted by Hunk and Lance smashing buttons and the occasional battle cry of their onscreen characters. She let her eyes travel past the couch pit and towards the windows that looked out onto space, a certain amount of calm washing over her at being surrounded by her friends.

 

She knew then that none of them were going to sleep in their own beds that night. It was a habit that none of them were too concerned with breaking. They'd gather in the video room pit and act like they would return to their own quarters, only to awake in the morning, limbs all tangled and covered by blankets. Usually someone fell onto the floor at some point. She was pretty sure that it was improper behavior for them to act so childish- to indulge in their uneasiness with being separated during sleep- but no one was going to say anything, so they didn't bother to try and grow up.

 

Besides, Hunk was a great cuddler, and Keith was practically their own personal heater.

 

Pidge wasn't ready for sleep yet though.

 

She reached out with her big toe, jabbing it into Keith's side without looking, keeping her eyes trained pointedly on the ceiling. It took another two jabs before he finally swatted at her foot, shoving it away from him. She retaliated by bashing her heel into his thigh, to which he reached down and pinned it one-handedly to the couch, continuing to stubbornly watch his tablet.

 

She sighed deeply, but got no response.

 

She changed tactics and sat up, leaning against Lance's back and making him slip off the edge of the couch and fall onto the floor with a _thwump._ Even Lance was prepared tonight it seemed, because without missing a beat, he was already back on the couch, but he leaned back completely and smashed her into the back of the couch. She barely heard Keith's smothered snicker over the sound of bashing buttons. She was strong, but Lance was much bigger than her, and he was purposely setting his weight back so she couldn't lift him off. She eventually had to resort to slapping her hands over his eyes, which finally earned her his indignant squawk.

 

“Cheating! Pidge is cheating!” He continued to use his controller even without his sight.

 

“Thanks Pidge!” Hunk cheered, easily taking the advantage back in the game. Pidge freed her foot while Keith was distracted and used it to dislodge his tablet from his hands, and grip the fabric on the couch to try to wiggle her way free from behind Lance. She shot forward and lunged for the tablet, planning on playing keep away, but Keith caught her around the stomach with one hand and his tablet with the other. Together they both bumped into Hunk and he nearly fell to the floor in the same fashion that Lance had, but he had been expecting the rough housing behind him and managed to stay upright.

 

Within seconds Keith and Pidge were tussling completely, and while it took him a moment Keith managed to get the upper hand, kneeing Pidge in the side and pinning her. His tablet had been lost along the way, and he was now fully awake, his face impassive and voice flat. “Why are you like this?”

 

“Why won't you pay attention to us?” She shot back, panting but grinning.

 

“We aren't doing anything! I was just-” Pidge had gotten her leg wedged between them and braced on his hip, and while two legs would have been able to throw him off her completely, she made due perfectly well with using her one foot to throw him to the side, where he collided with Lance and they both went tumbling to the floor

 

“Guys it is way too late to be wrestling.” Hunk finally paused the video game to look where Pidge had joined the boys on the floor, trying to find the lost tablet but instead getting roped back into the scuffle. “This is such a bad idea.” Pidge had Lance pinned but Keith had both of Pidge's arms held captive. Within minutes she had already learned that the boys were purposely avoiding her stump, and while she briefly wondered if it freaked them out, she was more focused on digging it under Keith's shoulder to flip him over.

 

It was just a leg. A bumpy leg without a foot. It wasn't even tender anymore. Sure, it was harder to coordinate, but she could still bash it into someone's stomach.

 

Someone's foot knocked into where her crutches were resting against the couch, and they fell over with a clatter as Keith let out a squawk at being nearly hit in the head by the armrests on them. It wasn't unusual for the paladins to start wrestling without much warning. Someone would kick someone or lock someone else in a headlock, and then they'd be tussling on the floor until they grew tired and quit. Pidge vaguely remembered Green mentioning that it was a trait of all paladins. Since they shared quintessence with the lions, they often play fought the same way cubs would in the wild. Green had even claimed to hear the teens growl and chirp the way normal lions would.

 

Pidge called it silly and said that human teenagers were just fucking weird and sometimes pinned each other to the ground for fun. She was just about to free herself from Lance's trap when the dimmed lights of the video room exploded into a bright red, flashing at erratic intervals and causing everyone in the room to freeze and look up at the hologram. Their video game had been replaced by the castle's alert system.

 

**[HOSTILE SHIP APPROACHING. 20 DOBOSHES OUT. FIGHTER CLASS- X]**

 

**[HOSTILE SHIP APPROACHING. 20 DOBOSHES OUT. FIGHTER CLASS- X]**

 

 

“Time to go!” Lance exclaimed, his eyes lighting up with an intensity that made Lance seem to vibrate before battle. The three of the floor managed to spring away from each other without incident and scramble to their feet while Hunk swooped down and handed Pidge her crutches.

 

“Do we just-?” Hunk looked to Pidge and then at Lance and Keith, hesitant with his question but obviously uncertain with how to proceed. Normally at any sort of alert had them scurrying to their lions without question- but they hadn't had time to even test to see if Pidge was capable of flying without some sort of prosthetic attached. Not to mention she'd been struggling to build up her strength for the past week.

 

“Yep.” She answered for them, settling herself up and heading towards the door.

 

“Are you sure-?”

 

“Yep!”

 

Before they could stop her she had already made too much headway towards her lion's hangar- she was impressively fast on her little crutches. Lance was still amazed to see her practically go zooming down the hall without seeing her actually run.

 

“Shiro's not going to like this.” Hunk grumbled before he too split off to get to Yellow.

 

The zipline had been no problem, but landing in her cruiser had been a little more difficult. Thankfully the cruiser had no peddles, and getting inside Green with the crutches was a little slippery but she managed. She had on her suit but the armor wasn't connecting right without the locks on the boot of her missing leg. They were going to make adjustments beforehand, but the Galran had beaten them to it.

 

A pang of irrational fear fled through her at the thought of her suit not being airtight, a lingering phobia from the idea that last time that had been the case she had been body injured and lost a limb. The fear washes over her so strongly that it tastes like acid on her tongue and fingers tightening around her spine.

 

**Breathe.**

 

Had she not been doing that? She sucks air greedily into her lungs, her vision returning to her after a moment.

 

She's vaguely aware that she had been a few more panicked moments away from a full blown panic attack, and that struck a sour nerve with her. She was fighting a war in space and was a soldier of the rebel cause. She could not freeze up every time the idea of an air leak filtered through her head.

 

**You need to give yourself space for healing. You cannot be so harsh or you will not get better.**

 

She knows Green is right, but the idea of such a weakness existing within her makes her uneasy.

 

**None the less, there are bigger issues at hand now.**

 

Sure enough, as soon as her vision focuses on the screens coming to life in front of her she sees the very unhappy face of Takashi Shirogane pops up on her monitor.

 

“Pidge.”

 

She busies herself by shoving on her helmet and looking around for something she can rig to hold the left pedal to the floor, pointedly not looking at the screen. “Yes?”

 

“We haven't even looked to see if you can pilot right now. How did you even get into Green?”

 

“With determination.” She is not smug. Certainly not.

 

Before Shiro can answer, the entire castle jolts and Allura's face joins him on the monitor. “Paladins, I understand the situation, but you must help defend the ship. You _need_ to get out there!”

 

“You heard the lady Shiro!” Pidge shouts as she finally looks up to grimace at him. He will most certainly not be happy with her later. True to word though, there is no time to wait any longer and the flickering lights of the castle only go to prove that. Pidge cuts off the comms quickly before looking to Green for advice.

 

“Can you fly without that pedal? Just like adjust the readings as if it were malfunctioning?”

 

**Yes. Flight may be rougher than normal.**

 

“That's perfectly fine.” She hums, hands wrapping around the throttles and adrenaline filling her veins. It had been two weeks since she had been tucked away from the universe inside a healing pod, and now she was more than ready to unleash her pent up energy on the Galrans who had dared to attack them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please Review!


	7. Assault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge hops back into battle and then... falls apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW this took forever to write sorry. Im in FMA hell currently rip.

She’s the first lion out of the castle. She can feel the others preparing to join her, loading up in their respective hangars and preparing to launch. She’s been connected to the others all week while they all rested, but preparing for battle and joining each other in their lions put everyone in a head frame that could not be achieved at any other time. They’d spent their time resting and connected to each other, but the connection that came with battle was far more personal. It was a bond based on survival and instinct with a current of fierceness running beneath it. They are separate fighting machines, but they act as one even when not formed together through Voltron. 

 

She can feel Shiro’s anger at her brashness and Lance’s unquellable excitement for battle. She can feel Keith’s adrenaline spiking and Hunk’s anxiety quivering.They’re five souls launching out into space to tear apart metal riffs and lose unattainable sound into space.

 

Green is vibrating around her, humming exuberantly with limitless life and quintessence. There’s a hint of trepidation to her, a hesitancy that comes with her worry for her paladin, but Green was a entity meant for battle, not for being hidden away. She was only meant to remain stationary for so long before she would get restless, and the same went for Pidge too. 

 

They were predators meant to roam, and now was their chance to stretch their legs. 

 

She curls her fingers around the controls, every nerve in her body hyper aware of every sensation that barragged her body. The texture of the metal beneath her fingertips was smooth and cool, the bodysuit rubbing against her skin was tight and firm, and her hair was sticking to the back of her neck with sweat despite the fact that she hadn’t done much physical exertion besides her struggle into the captain’s chair. A faint trickle of doubt wonders if she really  _ wasn’t  _ well enough to be entering battle right away, but suddenly a rail gun was fired right at Green’s belly, and she moves automatically, jerking them out of the range of fire. Instinct takes over all conscious thought, and her and Green emerge as one being, a war machine looking to defend their home. 

 

There’s four Galran Ships, large and looming over their beautiful castle, and none of them even have to think about the best way to attack. Voltron was a monster on the battlefield, unstoppable and fearsome, but from a tactical standpoint, it was not always the best option at hand. With multiple enemies present, they often forwent Voltron and remained in their lions so that no lingering hostiles had the chance to off the castle while Voltron was working another angle. This meant that the boys wouldn’t get the chance to peep into her mindspace, which she was grateful for. She’s aching and her nerves are completely frayed, but she’s built her walls up high enough that her teammates would not be able to see past her exterior emotions to the underlying anxiety plaguing her if she did not want them to. 

 

Keith goes sailing past her, and she can sense Lance pulling up beneath Green’s belly. They’re already being fired upon, and there is no more time for thinking or second guessing. There was only time for decisiveness and action-- a feat that she usually had no problem with. She had been relying on instinct ever since she had lost her family, trusting her gut and questioning the logistics later. 

 

Now however she feels like she’s malfunctioning, a computer glitching out as she struggles to perform the task she has been assigned by the universe to finish. Her moves are jerky and her mind sluggish. It does nothing but heighten her previous anxiety to new levels of ridiculousness.

 

Had she lost her touch? Had she become disconnected from her destiny and her team? _ What the fuck was wrong with her? _

 

She pushes her controls forward violently, her frustration coming out in the simplest of ways. The deafening rumbling of Green’s engines behind her back have spiked her adrenaline and sent her right into fight mode, and the vibrations under her feet from the blaster only a foot of metal from her pedals has her ready to kick ass, but her stupid brain was in overdrive, and not in a helpful way. 

 

“Pidge?! You okay? You’re lagging!” Keith pops up in her ear, and her eyes instinctively seek out the Red Lion on the battlefield. He hadn’t meant it as an insult she knows, only as an observation to voice his concern, something she can appreciate.

 

“It’s fine!” She replies, eyeing a cannon pointed Lance’s way. “Just-- trying to figure this out without the pedal. No worries. I’ll hold my own.” She holds her breath for a moment, listening to the silence from his line, wondering if he’ll speak her greatest fears. 

 

_ Don’t tell me it’s okay to go back inside Keith. Don’t tell me to hide until I’m ready, because I might just take you up on that offer, and I know I will never ever be ready to come back out. _

 

“Okay. Just let me know if you get in trouble.” 

 

She has to fight not to squeeze her eyes shut as tears threaten to swallow her. He had every reason to doubt her and her abilities right then. She was an inefficient teammate who was supposed to be watching his back and she was failing, and yet he was accepting her shortcoming as a natural occasion. He wasn’t angry or disappointed. He was just worried. 

 

Emotion closes around her throat even as she thrown her weight forward into her levers, flying through the atmosphere at impossible speeds as she twists around the destruction.  She’s on the fucking battlefield, she can’t afford to lose her head like this. Not now. Not now. She sends Green into a coast while she reevaluate the situation. 

 

She’d lost her leg. She’d failed an entire planet and her teammates. She’d lost her connection to Green. She’d died. She was traumatized. 

 

But she was still a goddamn paladin of Voltron. She was a defender of the universe.  She was the pilot of the Green Lion and she was good at it. She had come out into space to find her family and she was getting closer to her goal every single day. She had jumped back into Green at the first chance she had and she hadn’t let the fact that she was down a limb stop her. 

 

She was down, but she sure as well wasn’t out. 

 

Green vibrated heavily in her sternum, filling her with a warmth and spirit that only came through their bond and nothing else. It was as it someone lit a fire under her heart, eager to watch it dance as she looked up to her display. Her hands tightened around her controls, oddly numb but buzzing with unleashed adrenaline. Green’s existence was gliding around her bones and wiggling through her ribcage, making Pidge her own again. She could feel their bond strengthening-- it was a sensation she recognized from her time with the Olkari — and she was relieved that perhaps she would have a chance to redeem herself to this battle after all. 

 

Yellow goes sailing past her, and she feels pride building in her chest. 

 

She was down a leg, but not her mind. The physical body didn’t matter anyway — not when she had her wits about her. 

 

**_That’s my cub._ **

 

She startles at the sound of Green’s voice in her head, having almost forgotten that her lion could speak, but smiling once she recognizes the voice. Green had let her figure things out for her own the way she knew was necessary, and now they were ready to kick some serious ass. 

 

Her cannon forms at her beckoning like magic, and the kickback from it’s firing jolts her all the way to her bones. It blocks out the doubting voices in her head and drowns her in its universal power. 

 

She is a fighting force in its rawest form, a warrior and an authority to be reckoned with. Metal twists at her command and ships explode into pieces almost as soon as she thinks it.

 

She is a champion all of her own, trauma be damned. 

 

\------------------------------------

 

Pulling into the hangar after hell had simmered down awarded her with an audience she had not been expecting. Allura stood at the doorway waiting for her to disembark, arms crossed and dressed in her battle suit. She looked fierce as hell but Pidge couldn’t make out her face from the distance and she was sure she didn’t quite want to know what her friend was thinking anyhow. 

 

She knew it would take Shiro a couple of minutes to reach her from landing Black, and she planned to prepare herself for that shitfest as well as she could before he got there. She pushed back from the controls as Green’s engines powered down behind her, releasing the handles from a white knuckled grip. It was then that she noticed her hands were shaking violently, quavering so hard she vaguely wondered if she would even be capable of gripping her crutches. In fact, her whole body was shaking in such a way, and she wondered when the hell that had happened. Her teeth were almost rattling in her skull, and her thighs were trembling so relentlessly that it made her muscles ache with exhaustion. 

 

She tucked her hands against her belly and leaned over to put her head between her knees. She hadn’t even done anything. Battle in the lions could be mentally taxing and anxiety inducing but it usually didn’t completely drain her like this. She felt as if she had just spent an hour running in gym class. 

 

With an eighty pound backpack.

 

In the rain.

 

At three AM.

 

She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, trying to quell the shivers that seemed to vibrate from her core, clenching her teeth together to keep them from clacking. She was being betrayed by her own fucking body. She’d survived the battle— hell,  _ thrived  _ in the battle— and yet now she was crashing? What kind of bullshitery was that?

 

“Pidge?” Shiro’s voice echoed up into her lion, snapping her out of her thoughts. Fuck. She had meant to beat him out of the hangars where she could prove that she was perfectly fine— not hide in her lion until they thought something was wrong. 

 

She went to reach for her crutches only to discover that they had been thrown around the cabin towards the back during the battle after she had failed to secure them somewhere. She felt her cheeks flame with shame. She couldn’t get away with crawling around this time— not with everyone watching. She was stuck— they were waiting for her and she could feel the tendrils of panic creeping up her neck as she frantically tried to think of what to do to blow them off. She needed an excuse to buy her some more time— just enough time for her to get her crutches and put herself back together, but she was fairly certain that any excuse she thought of would be seen right through by her teammates. They weren’t stupid and this was her first mission back— fuck fuck fuck—

 

“Hey Shiro? Lance is stuck in the belly of Blue.” Hunk’s voice flickers through her comms and she sees her friend standing in the doorway, hiding a laugh as he tried to be serious. “He needs our help getting out.” 

 

She saw as Shiro’s face contorted into confusion before he turned away from Green to stare down Hunk instead. “What do you mean he’s stuck?” 

 

“He brought along a game controller by accident, and he put it down to fly, and it flew down inside of Blue’s entrance tunnel and into the inner mechanism I guess. Anyway— he went to try and get it and now he’s super stuck. I couldn’t get him out.” 

 

Shiro rubbed aggressively at his face with his flesh hand as if to distract himself from the manic stupidity of his team before turning with a sigh and starting towards the doors. “Alright. Let’s go.” He cast one last look at where he knew Pidge was hiding before he disappeared. Allura had just started towards Green herself when Hunk spoke up again. “Uh, Princess? Lance asked for you too.” 

 

“What in the world does he need me for?” She asked incredulously, eyeing Hunk suspiciously. 

 

“Dunno, but that’s what he said.” 

 

Pidge could see how Allura was torn between brushing him off and going with him, looking back at Green meaningfully as if she could summon Pidge to come out with only a look. Hunk made of her mind for her though by calming stating “Keith is coming anyway.” and grabbing her hand to haul her along to Lance’s rescue.

 

Alone in the hangar, Pidge felt hot tears rush up her eyes so quickly that she didn’t have time to process that she was crying before she made a undignified sobbing noise into the silence of her lion. 

 

The air in her lion warmed almost immediately and a faint purr made the ground beneath Pidge’s skin vibrate and rumble. Her lion said nothing but the presence of her in her mind increased tenfold, smothering her in affection even as Pidge felt her break down threaten to tear her apart. 

 

She knew they had done that on purpose— torn Allura and Shiro away so she could put herself back together, to give her enough time to rebuild her facade and get back in the game. Her friends knew her that well, and had rescued her from her own damned pride. 

 

She slipped onto the ground even as she felt whimpers spill past her throat, careful to make sure that her comms were disabled as she swallowed back small snivels. She plans to get her crutches once she’s down, but somehow that plan goes flying out the window because all at once she can’t stop the sobs anymore, and they’re impossibly loud in the small space of her lion’s headspace, and she curls up until her forehead is touching her stump, and her arms wrap around her until she can’t breath, and her leg isn’t there and her team is covering for her and she can’t reach her crutches and  _ she wants her brother and her dad and her mom to make all of this better—  _

 

“Alright Green let me in.” It’s Keith’s voice that echoes up through the hangar, and she can only crunch further into herself until her lungs can’t contract and she wasn’t breathing through her tears anyway and she just wants to curl up and die and not have to deal with the problems that she knew where coming and she wants her leg back—

 

_ She wants her leg back. _

 

She can feel Green lower her head to allow Keith access, and she wonders when Green had decided that was a good idea but it doesn’t matter anyway because Keith is already boarding and she can’t be quiet anymore even if she wanted to. 

 

“Pidge?” She can hear him fumbling up the ramp, probably tripping over her crutches before he sees her. “Oh— shit.” 

 

She bites down on her lip until she’s sure that no sound will escape her, and she turns her head away so he can’t see. They’re partners and she knows he’s seen worse, but her pride is wicked and it’s such a natural response for her to hide her emotions that she knows she won’t be able to face him until she calms down. 

 

He seems to get that vibe too, because she hears him slip back to grab her crutches before returning again and plopping down heavily against her side, leaning against her firmy but remaining silent. He sets her crutches down in front of her and then looks at her while she keeps her head down, too embarrassed to face him yet. She can feel his eyes boring into her for several moments before he sighs and wraps a solid arm around her shoulders and tugs her against his chest. She sucks in a surprised gasp that almost stops her crying, and she can feel his other arm come up to snake behind her back and hold onto her tightly. “Damn Pidge. Damn.” 

 

She snorts against his chest and tries to stop shaking so badly, but it doesn’t work very well and he just tightens his hold on her anyway. It takes a few minutes for her to become capable of human speech again, but even then her words are warped and thick. “I— I can’t do this— I can’t break down. I need— need to be able— to fight.” 

 

“You did fight Pidge. You kicked utter ass out there. I thought maybe I was going to have to pick up your slack but if anything you were more kickass than I’ve ever seen you.” 

 

When she sucks in a breath it comes out far shakier than she would have liked. “I fought, but now I can’t— can’t—”  _ Can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t process.  _

 

“So? Take a minute. Cry it out ‘til you can’t cry anymore. Sometimes we cry. It’s part of being human.” He mumbles, and squeezes her once. She shakes her head at him. 

“I’m a paladin— I need to be able—”

 

“ _ Pidge.  _ You are able. You can kick ass and also break down. There’s no rules here. We are all making our own rules. I just made this one that says you can do both. So take a deep breath.” 

 

She can’t argue with him on that, and while she’s still feeling weak and pathetic, she knows what he’s trying to tell her, and she does feel better now that she’s cried. She’s exhausted and feeling more than a little silly, but she also feels cleansed, like she had been holding it on her soul and had thrown the weight off violently by sobbing all over Green. 

 

So she takes her deep breath, and reminds herself that he’s right. She can be a paladin and human both. 


End file.
